From the misery of a failed love affair came a work that Ferruccio Busoni hailed with the words: ‘At last, something really new’. This was Bartók’s 1908 Fourteen Bagatelles, unashamedly experimental, decidedly forward-looking and displaying, in embryonic form, many of the qualities associated with his mature style. Buoyed by the success of his Dance Suite at a concert in Budapest in 1925, Bartók felt inspired to compose major works for himself to play as a concert pianist. These include the neo-classical Nine Little Piano Pieces (1926) which owe something to Baroque composers, especially to Italians such as Frescobaldi and Marcello, and have been described as a kind of musical scrapbook.