RACHMANINOFF Preludes: op. 3/2; op. 23; op. 32 • Mathieu Gaudet (pn) • XXI 1622 (2 CDs: 80:48)

Quebec pianist Mathieu Gaudet (b. 1977) throws his hat into the recording ring with Rachmaninoff’s 24 preludes, a daunting prospect in view of the music’s difficulty and of the competition. Sad to say, Gaudet is neither technically equipped to do justice to these preludes nor possessed of the imagination to bring them to life. The opening of the (in)famous C♯-Minor Prelude sets the tone for what is to come. The third double octave is sustained interminably, bringing the music to a dead halt before it has barely begun. Thereafter, the music plods on, clunky and overpedaled to the point of harmonic confusion. Op. 23/1 drifts along with stultifying regularity—no sense of mystery, no color. The whole piece is too loud. No. 2 in B♭ Major, an exuberant showpiece in the right hands—is here a muddy mess. In No. 5 in G Minor, the accents are often in the wrong place, the style is clipped and mechanical, the central episode lacks any suggestion of oriental grandeur. In No. 8 in A♭ Major, the melodic line is buried in the accompaniment figuration. And so it goes . . .

A few of the preludes are nicely done: op. 23/6 is delicately poetic, op. 32/3 sparkles and flashes, and 32/8 has refreshing buoyancy. But in most of them, Gaudet’s attempts to surmount the technical demands leave him no room to maneuver on purely musical matters. The Fazioli he uses has been recorded with an opaque, thuddy sound. If you’re in the market for the complete preludes, go for Idil Biret or Ruth Laredo. They’re strikingly different, yet each brims with imaginative touches, technical assurance, and an enormous palette of colors. Robert Markow