Making sense of Chopin’s Etude in E, op10 No.3

Editing all of Chopin’s Etudes for the new Peters
Chopin edition (The Complete Chopin: a new
critical edition) has turned into more of a musical
adventure than I could have foreseen when I took
it on. Given the hundreds of editions of the Etudes already extant, I’d thought we must by now know pretty well all there is to find in these pieces. In fact I’ve repeatedly been surprised by details still lurking in their original sources. A longer article later this year will range through the Etudes more generally in that regard. My focus here, though, is on one of the most popular yet puzzling Etudes: op10 no. 3 in E major.