Leopold Godowsky wrote his first Studies on the Chopin Études when he was barely 23 years old, and the complete cycle took some 20 years to finish. It remains one of the most extraordinary and technically demanding of all such works. It offered Godowsky - one of the greatest virtuosi of his age, but a haphazard teacher - an opportunity to resolve his innovative theories of keyboard technique. His exploration of developing the left hand in these studies remains revolutionary, and his ambition of ‘furthering the art of pianoforte playing’, triumphantly vindicated. © Naxos