Klaus Döring's Classical Music/Klaus Döring's Klassische Musik

  by  Emily E. Hogstad    April 26th, 2026 Piano etudes don’t have to be dry technical drills. In the hands of a talented composer, they can become miniature works of art. While names like  Chopin ,  Liszt , and  Debussy  tend to dominate discussions of the genre, women composers across the past 250 years have contributed some of the most challenging and expressive etudes ever written. From Hélène de Montgeroult’s revolutionary harmonic language to Grażyna Bacewicz’s electrifying mid-century modernism, these etudes reveal a vibrant pedagogical tradition that can totally reshape our understanding of piano history. Today, we’re looking at ten of the best piano etudes by women composers, spanning from the late eighteenth century to the twentieth. Hélène de Montgeroult (1764–1836)   Hélène de Montgeroult was a French aristocrat, pianist, and innovative composer whose life reads like a novel. She survived the French Revolution – as one urban ...