"It is hardly surprising that the significance of the chapters in music history does not depend on their size. But almost never has there been such a concentration of events as in the case of the development, manifestation and overturning of serial music.And what is even more remarkable is that the individual stages of a historical process (post-twelve-tone serialism in our case) can be illustrated with the works of one composer, that is, with the piano pieces of Pierre Boulez. Just one decade passed between the fragile as well as fugitive Douze notations and the prodigious torso of the Third Piano Sonata – between the early work of an unknown composer in his twenties, who was already firm in his resolve not to keep up the tradition he was part of, and the work of the thirty-year-old avant-garde star, who only had to loosen the ties he himself had put on before."-Raoul Mörchen