I should say that any interpretation by Rachmaninoff of any piece of music by another composer amounted to a kind of transcription, because he changed so much. And he was seldom criticised for it, because he did it so powerfully. For instance, he played Beethoven in a very Russian way, but it didn’t shock anyone. Even that notorious purist, Artur Schnabel would say, “The only one who plays Beethoven well – after me, naturally – is Rachmaninoff.” Rachmaninoff’s Beethoven was muscular – a bit crude, with a pockmarked face and dressed in mussed work clothing. Or take Schumann’s Carnaval, which is usually played like a game of Ping-Pong. Even Arthur Rubenstein makes it sound merely flashy. But Rachmaninoff’s Carnaval is a series of grand pictures, of luxurious, impressive canvases: mysterious ladies, extravagant gentlemen, the whole Romantic era. And how Rachmaninoff played a Chopin waltz or mazurka – like Genghis Khan, like a Cossack with sabre bared! Chopin’s Fantaisie falls apart in the hands of other pianists, but Rachmaninoff sculpted it like a Michelangelo, out of a single block of marble. When he played the “Funeral March” from the Chopin sonata it was completely different from what was written in the notes but no less grand. The last movement sounded just like wind blowing in a cemetery. Here too Rachmaninoff created a tragic picture, a whole Romantic landscape. What imagination he had! << less