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Soldano is a strong advocate of Rachmaninoff’s piano music, but here he appears to have arranged 15 songs for piano solo simply because the music sounds pretty. It does sound pretty, and often more than that, given Rachmaninoff’s propensity for grand gestures and unashamed (even overdone) Romanticism. And Soldano makes an effort to communicate, without words, the emotions that Rachmaninoff sought to produce with words in three songs from his Op. 4, three from Op. 8, three from Op. 14, two from Op. 21, two from Op. 26, and two published posthumously.

The arrangements are pleasantly done and the performances are well-paced and sensitive, although the songs are not given in any discernible sequence and do not relate particularly well to each other except in a very general stylistic sense. These were not intended as songs without words but as songs with words, and in the absence of verbiage, what Soldano brings forth is essentially 40 minutes of background music: everything sounds nice, nothing sounds particularly memorable, and there is really nothing in these Rachmaninoff arrangements that makes them worthy of foreground attention – they are fine for listening to while also doing other things.

More interesting and involving on the disc are Soldano’s four arrangements of works by Debussy: the prelude from his early cantata L’Enfant Prodigue and the three well-known Nocturnes. These four pieces were always intended to communicate through instruments, not voice, and Soldano’s arrangements show his concern for using the piano to bring forth the same kinds of effects that Debussy sought through the orchestra. This works, on the whole, rather well, with the impressions of clouds and the sea, in particular, conveyed to good effect through Soldano’s sensitive presentations. The Debussy works, though, remain more communicative in their original form, their colors more delicately blended and contrasted than on the piano.  It is pleasant to hear these familiar pieces in a way that is different from the usual, and Soldano certainly shows himself to be a careful arranger as well as a caring interpreter. The works on the CD as a whole, though, are considerably less convincing than in the forms in which the composers intended them to be heard.