The preparations for the recording of Rachmaninoff's solo piano works proved to be very exhausting. Laredo said she now understood why some of the pieces had never been played by anybody: it was simply because they were so hard. Rachmaninoff, who was 6 feet 4 inches tall with correspondingly large hands, had composed many of his works for himself. One could only wonder how the tiny 5-foot-1-inch Laredo was able to play Rachmaninoff's pieces, some of which indulged in 11-key stretches. After practicing the music of “Rocky”, as she called Rachmaninoff, she had to get her hands massaged.