Birth of the Etude

The best-known piano studies are the 27 by Chopin, most of them composed in the 1830s. But Chopin did not create the genre: a number of prominent pianist-composers had already established the piano study, or étude, in the decades before Chopin sat down to write his. Although this repertoire is as good as unknown today, it is a treasure-trove of miniature jewels, many of them announcing the dawn of Romanticism in their combination of Classical delicacy and a new harmonic warmth. Anna Petrova-Forster received her first piano lessons at the age of six. After graduating as a soloist in the class of Professor Liuba Entcheva at the Sofia Music Academy, she entered Louis Hiltbrand's master- class at the Geneva Conservatoire, where she remained until his death. She obtained a second solo diploma at the Lucerne Conservatoire in Hubert Harry's class. For over two years she worked on various chamber-music programs with Nathan Milstein in London. Anna Petrova-Forster has appeared on radio and television broadcasts as both soloist and chamber musician. Her wish to rediscover the compositions of lesser-known composers from the past has led to recordings of music by such unfamiliar figures as William Baines, Sergei Bortkiewicz, Alexander Grechaninov, Josef Matthias Hauer, August Alexander Klengel and Daniel Steibelt.