21 JEAN-BAPTISTE FONLUPT It seems to me that they give a kind of grandeur to these short pieces that are the Preludes. What is your opinion? Sonic tableaux, these Preludes are not miniatures. Within their concision, they contain something far more expansive. The bell-like sonorities contribute to this sensation. When one looks at a painting of a landscape, there are often three dimensions: spatial depth, a horizontal line, and a vertical element, such as a tree or a church rising into the sky. When listening to a Prelude by Rachmaninoff, one has the impression of inhabiting a defined space, a landscape. This music is not discursive. Paradoxically, Les Études-tableaux strike me as more discursive, more expressive of states of mind. In each Prelude, the composer took care not to wander, not to lead the listener elsewhere. The first bars determine the character of the Prelude up until its conclusion. There is no introduction. We enter straight away and are left rooted. The music never carries us away to another place. When we do take our leave of it, it is to get somewhere else, with the next Prelude. Each is precisely that: a unique landscape.
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