Chopin | Etude op. 25 n. 11, “Winter Wind” (1836)
 
Chopin composed the Etude op. 25 n. 11 in 1836, a year of emotional turmoil for him, struggling between the failed marriage to Maria Wodzińska and the beginning of his complicated love affair to the French writer Marie d’Agoult. Every ounce of such turmoil was poured into the Winter Wind etude, which challenges the pianist with a tumultuous cascade of scales and arpeggios on the right hand and fast, far leaps with the left hand playing the melody on an often-irregular tempo. The beauty and difficulty of this pieces doesn’t just sit on the necessary dexterity to play correctly all the notes, but most of all on the harmonical and melodical sensitivity needed to highlight both hands’ melodies, playing the etude like a duet for one performer.