Although Baines tried his hand at most forms of composition, producing in his teens a massive symphony and copious chamber and vocal works, the piano being always accessible remained his natural medium of expression. He wrote to please himself, happily free of that need to feel justified in the eyes of critics, public and posterity which is the bane of young composers. His music can verge on banality and then as effortlessly touch the sublime with a candour some contemporaries found hard to accept: nobody else, save perhaps Alkan, could have written such disparate pieces as the First and Third Preludes on the very same day …
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