To Chopin is
due the honor and credit of having set fast the boundary between
piano and orchestral music, which through other composers of the
romantic school, especially Robert Schumann, has been defaced and
blotted out, to the prejudice and damage of both species."
Kullak is equally as warm in his praise of it:
One of the grandest and most ingenious of Chopin's etudes, and
a companion piece to op. 10, No. 12, which perhaps it even
surpasses. It is a bravura study of the highest order; and is
captivating through the boldness and originality of its
passages, whose rising and falling waves, full of agitation,
overflow the entire keyboard; captivating through its harmonic
and modulatory shadings; and captivating, finally, through a
wonderfully invented little theme which is drawn like a "red
thread" through all the flashing and glittering waves of tone,
and which, as it were, prevents them from scattering to all
quarters of the heavens. This little theme, strictly speaking
only a phrase of two measures, is, in a certain sense, the
motto which serves as a superscription for the etude,
appearing first one voiced, and immediately afterward four
voiced.
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