What most impresses and thrills me in Lutoslawski's piano output is his immense degree of creativity while heeding every detail with painstaking attention - his wonderful way of associating traditional forms with innovative, bold sonorities and structures, while managing to preserve a great degree of independence that makes this music sound effortless and lively - Corinna Simon Witold Lutoslawski was one of the greatest composers of the 20th century. His well-known Variations on a Theme by Paganini for two pianos are in the repertoire of almost every respectable piano duo. Unfortunately, apart from the short piece An Overheard Tune, Lutoslawski left no other work for two pianists to posterity. During the second World War, Lutoslawski played many of his own compositions in cafes, in order to make a living. Whereas Lutoslawski's earliest compositions - the Sonata and the Two Etudes - are brimming with technical challenges for the pianist, the next pieces he wrote are cycles of brief miniatures in which he explores each note and each rest to attain a maximum degree of expression.
