Edmund Battersby's approach to Rachmaninov is as sympathetic and intelligent as his booklet-notes suggest it will be. He has the fluency to do justice to the music's technical demands and his tempos and characterization are well chosen and unidiosyncratic. Unfortunately Koch's recording is unhelpfully dry and immediate, so that the whole sound-picture feels claustrophobic. This may be partly why Battersby's interpretations never quite throw off a sense of constriction; and he does tend to be over-fastidious with the text (especially with punctuating rests). He is undoubtedly a talented musician, but given the ready availability of the complete Preludes and Etudes in superior recordings, and given that the overall timing here is ungenerous, this is not a competitive issue at full-price.'