Most of Kirchner’s piano works were shortish character pieces, many of great charm and skill. His style remained essentially unchanged throughout his life, and owed much to the example of Schumann, showing a similar mastery of miniature forms and an impressive ability to capture the essence of a wide range of emotions and moods with remarkable vividness and economy. An excellent pianist himself, he wrote in a naturally flowing, deeply pianistic idiom which makes his posthumous neglect difficult to understand.