The early Preludes (his first published works) are wonderfully sensual — they have as their ancestor both Debussy's fluid pianistic style and emphasis on the individual "sound image", and the elusive and shifting modality of Fauré's last pieces. The later études could be argued to be the progenitor of an entire school of composition — it's a shame that he didn't stay in this mode for long; nothing he did afterwards matches the intellectual density of these pieces.
― corey, Saturday, 30 April 2011 02:25 (thirteen years ago) link