Though Dutilleux began composing at an early age and undertook the rigorous course of study at the Paris Conservatoire, he regarded his Piano Sonata of 1946-8 as an Opus 1. The musical language is as much modal as tonal, owing as much to Bartók’s methods of musical organization and the 19th-century Germanic concept of the large-scale masterpiece as contemporary developments in harmony. (Piano Classics)
