played by Dorothy Hildreth (piano) Preludes in G; in E flat minor; in G sharp minor; in E flat; in C minor

Rachmaninoff is the composer not merely of one never-to-be-forgotten Prelude, but of no fewer than twenty-four preludes. In other words, he has written a prelude in every possible key, major and minor, like Bach and Chopin.
Admittedly the C sharp minor was the earliest. It is one of a set of five piano pieces, Op. 3, written in 1892 when the composer was only nineteen. But nine or ten years later Rachmaninoff produced a set of Ten Preludes, numbered Op. 23. And in 1910 he completed the cycle of twenty-four keys with another set of Thirteen Preludes, Op. 32.