Paul Dukas’s pianism is among the finest representations of the French fin-de-siècle style despite his small portfolio of piano writing. Dukas’s Piano Sonata (1901) is the most complex, serious, and monumental piece in French keyboard history. This sonata was dedicated to Saint-Saëns and was premiered by Edouard Risler, a celebrated pianist of the era. In 1928, the critic Irving Schwerké published his analysis of the sonata in The Musical Quarterly: “mutual formal perfection and mobility of thought…By the vastness of its proportions, the quality of its writing, the power of its developments, and by its luminous lyricism, the Sonata in E flat minor is unrivaled by any other composition of this type”

Indeed, the synthetic aesthetic that Dukas pursues in the sonata appears in form and structure, colorful harmony use, and refined compositional techniques. The sonata-allegro form of the first movement is representative of French Romanticism, manifesting a virtuosic texture with liberal use of accidentals. The Beethovenian second movement is a free-variation in heavenlike mood. The vigorous, perpetual rhythmic first part of the third movement is sharply contrasted with the following strict fugue. The last movement is symphonic in scale; after the improvisational Très Lent, the ambitious first theme contrasts with the grandeur, majestic Lisztian second theme in moods.