The storm has passed. It is difficult to estimate the losses. It could be worse. It remains to be seen what has survived and what has fallen. In any case, the wind knocks down old trees to the benefit of the forest. And maybe it's better than wind did it, than fire or flood. Or a meteorite, which can also happen. Or a glacier. Or other people.

I closed the exposition and moved onto the fast-paced part, which has been a development, from the very beginning. This will be followed by a slow-paced part, which will be a development as well. I don’t know yet what the end will be like, probably the return of the (developed) exposition. For the time being, I am painstakingly tinkering with the piano. As always, I can roughly see the entirety of the form and I think I can see the details as well, but when I get down to those details, the entirety of the form disappears and with each successive bar I no longer know what to do. It’s as if I'm seeing a distant skyscraper that I have to get to through a system of underground passageways, only being able to get to the surface at major intersections. So is the job.

Developments have always made a huge impression on me. E.g. in Shostakovich. And Ades. And Dutilleux. And Messiaen. Beethoven, often. Haydn and Mozart, sometimes. Brahms, less often. And Mahler, the least often. I tried to believe Shostakovich that Mahler was the pure height of this art, but somehow I never could. But it is in the case of Chekhov. And Conrad. And Knausgard. And Kundera. And Pamuk. And Miłosz.

(transl. Magdalena Małek-Andrzejowska)