The
Minuetto was the last one of these études to be written, and the main theme comes from a sketch dating from about ten years earlier; according to this sketch, I had originally intended this minuet as being part of a sonata. I think it provides a welcome contrast within an otherwise ‘busy’ collection, and because of the (intentional) similarity between its final cadence and the beginning of the
Prelude and Fugue, the two pieces go particularly well programmed together. On the personal side, it was interesting for me to link the two pieces this way, uniting, as it were, the earliest-written étude in this opus with the most recent one.
from notes by Marc-André Hamelin © 2010
