Here‚ following his earlier Rachmaninov discs‚ 28­year­old Nikolai Lugansky concentrates on the composer’s youthful ardour and intricacy. And as on previous occasions this prize­winning young Russian pianist offers immaculate pianism. Everything is thrown off with unfaltering‚ full­toned authority. He rides the crest of the C minor Prelude with ease and relishes the virtuoso heroics of the B flat Prelude with an enviable command. And yet everything is exemplary only up to a point. In the more lyrical and introspective pages he shows a detachment hard to square with Rachmaninov’s emotional fullness. How I missed Horowitz’s biting Slavic intensity in‚ for example‚ the third Moment musical (Sony‚ 7/94) or Boris Berezovsky’s wider imaginative horizons in the E flat minor Prelude (a Russian Feux follets) (Teldec‚ 9/92). Here‚ the cascades of double notes remain just that‚ an artistic parsimony again evident in Lugansky’s oddly imperturbable reading of the first Moment musical. Again‚ you may marvel at his thunderous advance through the E minor Moment musical but even here others achieve more acute poetic qualities. For a less generalised view of the Preludes I would recommend Ashkenazy‚ Howard Shelley and Moura Lympany (on Erato; unforgivably neither of her Decca sets are available on CD). For the Moments musicaux the reader should beg‚ borrow or steal Lazar Berman’s early and legendary Russian MK disc and there he will hear playing of an altogether different profile and voltage. Erato’s sound is excellent and Lugansky’s golden­boy appearance is reproduced in triplicate (in one instance he appears to be halting traffic). The playing‚ though technically fearless‚ is musically too safe.