Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Pianist Corner Thoughts on Rachmaninoff's Etude-Tableaux Op. 39 No. 6 in A Minor.

I'm thinking of studying this piece shortly, does anyone have any thoughts on it? Anyone who has played it, knows it's difficulties?

Thanks.

This is a great piece. Interestingly,

- Evgeny Kissin plays the scales relatively slowly, and slightly accelerates most of them.

- Leif Ove Andsnes plays the scales all very quickly at a similar tempo to the rest of the piece.

Two quite different interpretations, but I think they both can work very well.

I'd say its probably one of the more difficult Etudes-Tableaux, but also one of the best. I'm not a paticular fan of either of those interpretations really.

I don't like it much, but it's one of the etudes where there are a lot of counter melodies going on, and you have to really pay attention to play them (and usually nightmarish to bring out correctly)