Although Dutilleux had been active as a composer for ten years when he wrote his piano sonata, he viewed it as his Opus 1, the first work that he considered up to his mature standards.
[2][4] Debussy, Ravel,[4] Bartók and Prokofiev[5] have been cited as influences on the piece although critics have also stressed that its language is original and distinctive,[4][6] a personal synthesis of French Impressionism and Soviet music.
[1] The piano sonata represented an opportunity for Dutilleux to experiment with an ambitious, large-scale project, something that his previous commissioned works did not permit.
In his own words: "I wanted to move gradually towards working in larger forms, and not to be satisfied with short pieces – to get away, if you like, from a way of writing that was 'typically French'".
[6][9] The work has been described as "a brilliant, multi-layered piece with echoes of Bartók and Prokofiev"[5] as well as a "sonata that Debussy might have written... sensuous and classical".