1926 is known to musicologists as Bartók's "piano year", when he underwent a creative shift in part from Beethovenian intensity to a more Bachian craftsmanship.
[1] The work is in three movements, with the following tempo indications: It is tonal but highly dissonant (and has no key signature), using the piano in a percussive fashion with erratic time signatures.
Underneath clusters of repeated notes, the melody is folklike.
Musicologist Halsey Stevens finds in the work early forms of many stylistic traits that became more fully developed in Bartók's "golden age", 1934–1940.
at the end of the score, dedicating it to Ditta Pásztory-Bartók, his second wife.