Etudes
I find titles a problem. For me they are almost never arrived at before the completion of the piece. An exception here are the "Etudes" — there was no problem about what to call them. They are dedicated to Bernhard Abramowitsch, a marvelous pianist with whom I first came into contact during my student days in Berkeley, California. Bernhard, being an extremely intelligent man, passed them on to a very gifted student of his, David Del Tredici. We caught him at the age of consent (about seventeen) and he learned them and played them spectacularly. Neither Bernhard nor, to my knowledge, anyone else has been able or willing to face them, certainly not me. They are criminally difficult.
Robert Helps 
