The American-Israeli pianist Inon Barnatan has recorded a Rachmaninov album at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music for Pentatone. The unique part of this album is the first recording of Barnatan’s own solo-piano arrangement of the Symphonic Dances, Op 45. Barnatan’s cue is the recording of Rachmaninov’s own playing of extracts from this piece for Eugene Ormandy, illustrating the new work before the orchestral premiere, a pirate recording – almost certainly made without the composer’s knowledge – that was known about for years by collectors and was eventually released by Marston Records in 2018. ‘It’s one of my favourite recordings of Rachmaninov playing anything,’ Barnatan has previously commented. Barnatan wrote his transcription during the Covid lockdown, using the time to learn notation software.

The rest of the album contains the Op 16 Moments musicaux, the three movements from Bach’s E major Partita that Rachmaninov transcribed in 1933, the Vocalise in a solo piano version and the G sharp minor Prelude, Op 32 No 12. Pentatone have scheduled the release for November this year.