Etudes-tableaux, op. 39
Romantic Étude Piano solo ~45 min
In brief

This piece projects a tense Romantic passion: broad harmonic gestures, bursts of massive chords and dramatic breaths that create a dark yet expansive soundscape. Technically you will face, in particular, Tempo rubato (3.1/5) which requires sustaining the musical line while allowing expressive shifts — concretely this means controlling the arm and wrist to stretch or compress phrases without losing forward drive — and Sustain pedal (3.1/5) which demands precise release and half‑pedaling to keep textures clear while preserving resonance. The work comes from Rachmaninoff’s late‑Romantic output and is part of his Etudes‑Tableaux group, pieces that fuse technical challenges with orchestral piano color.

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  • Play — Rachmaninoff: 9 Etudes-Tableaux Op.39 (Lugansky, Hayroudinoff, Sofronitsky) · Ashish Xiangyi Kumar (the player loads on click)

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  • Play — Etudes-tableaux, Op. 39: No. 4 in B Minor. Allegro assai · Sergei Rachmaninoff, Yuja Wang (the player loads on click)

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Sheet music

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MusicCoach difficulty
88/100
Master repertoire
Likely range : 74–100/100
Confidence : 53% · to confirm
BeginnerIntermediateAdvancedVirtuoso
Exam grade
Beyond grade 8

The grade scale stops at 8; this work belongs to concert or diploma repertoire.

Difficulty estimate by MusicCoach on a scale of 1 to 100.

Where this work sits
050100

Most works cluster between 45 and 65: a small score gap often marks a real step. The highlighted bar shows this work among those for the same instrument.

The MusicCoach difficulty measures a work's overall demands (technique, reading, stamina) on a shared 0-100 scale, consolidated from editorial and pedagogical reference points (Henle, exam syllabuses, curation) and our own analyses. It measures neither musical value nor the practice time YOU will need: two musicians of the same level can experience the same work very differently depending on their strengths (hands used to octaves, quick sight-reading…). The confidence reflects how many reference points sit behind the score and how well they agree — a lightly documented score is flagged “to validate”. For a truly personal bearing, the diagnostic and your space compare each work to YOUR estimated level, which the score alone cannot do.

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Difficulty sources
Henle Verlag
8
85/100 normalised · 6 obs.
Henle Verlag
9
95/100 normalised · 11 obs.
Henle Verlag
7
74/100 normalised · 2 obs.
Relative difficulty
93%
Among Sergei Rachmaninoff
98%
Era Romantic
96%
Genre
Estimated skills
Pedaling
Sustain pedal
1
Style
Romantic style
1
Rhythm
Tempo rubato
1
Technique
Double notes
1
Technique
Fast passages
1
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