Draft:15 Etudes of Virtuosity, Op.72 (Moszkowski)

The 15 Etudes of Virtuosity, Op. 72 (French: 15 Études de Virtuosité), is a collection of etudes for solo piano composed in 1903 by Moritz Moszkowski. They were dedicated to Aleksander Michałowski and published in 1903 by Enoch & Cie.

Background
Moritz Moszkowski (23 August 1854 – 3 March 1925) was a German composer and pianist of Polish-Jewish descent. He was born in Breslau (the now Polish town Wrocław) into a wealthy family.

In 1902, Moszkowski sent a letter to his publisher Henri Hinrichsen mentioning the creation of these 15 etudes. He planned to make them at around 4 pages each in length and would write them with very fast tempos.

No. 1 in E Major
The first etude in the collection is written in. The tempo included in the first edition is vivace and is played at around 180 bpm in most recordings.

The structure of the piece consists of a high-register melody played in the right hand. This melody in the first section of the piece repeats many times throughout the piece and is eventually introduced in the left hand. At the start, the left plays around the root chord and beats 1 and 2 while resting on 3. However, this variation breaks around every 4 bars, playing staccato eighth notes.