Studies on Chopin's Études
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The Studies on Chopin's Études are a set of 53 arrangements of Chopin's études by Leopold Godowsky, composed between 1894 and 1914. They are renowned for their technical difficulty: critic Harold C. Schonberg called them "the most impossibly difficult things ever written for the piano." Several of the studies (for example, the study "Ignis Fatuus" on Chopin's Étude in A minor, Op. 10, No. 2) put the original right-hand part into the left hand; several others are for the left hand alone (for example, the study on the "Revolutionary" Étude, transposed to C♯ minor). Two of the studies even combine two études; the better known of these, called "Badinage," combines both the G♭ (the "Black Key" Étude of Op. 10 and the "Butterfly" étude of Op. 25).