Szymanowski enjoyed an enviable range of advantages: A home in which art was accepted and encouraged, private teachers, and the friendship and advice of such artists as his cousin, the distinguished pianist and teacher Heinrich Neuhaus; pianist Artur Rubinstein; the conductor Grzegorz Fitelberg; or the great violin virtuoso, Pawel Kochánski. Though Szymanowski's youth was largely passed at Tymoszówka, the comfortable family estate in Ukraine, the monotony of le pays was broken by frequent visits to Kiev or Vienna, where he heard the music of Wagner for the first time at age 13, a formative experience that sustained him until overlaid by the impact of Debussy, Ravel, and Stravinsky. From 1901, he studied composition in Warsaw with the distinguished Polish composer Zygmunt Noskowski, though the substance of his tuition was derived almost wholly from German Romantic models and Chopin. Szymanowski acquainted himself with the new music of Reger, Richard Strauss, and Scriabin, which would hold him in thrall until World War I. But despite an evident vocation for composition and abundant talent, his response to the stylistic riot those composers represented was uncertain, and his first steps as a composer proved halting. In 1904, as his studies with Noskowski drew to a close, his fellow student Ludomir Rózycki recalled that "When he was working on his first piano sonata, I often found him at the piano, studying meticulously the structure of Chopin's and Scriabin's piano passages. He knew how to discern in their music the secrets of piano style. Even then his every passage had a brilliant piano facture." Indeed, the writing is elaborate, pianistic, and orchestral in effect, though the handling of sonata form is rule-of-thumb and Szymanowski seems unable to think beyond the phrase, which means that his ideas fail to generate development and structure. Despite a number of brilliant moments, the ostensible drama of the first movement is curiously episodic, and fails to build convincingly. Likewise, cyclic construction—the first movement's second subject furnishes thematic material for the Adagio, as well as the Trio of the Minuet—remains a mere orthopedic device. But however hit upon, the Adagio's opening—a sort of chorale in 3/4 time—reveals the consoling lyricism of which the young composer was capable in inspired moments, though the two pages of Agitato that interrupt it have no more raison d'être than to provide crude contrast. The Minuet radiates an endearing courtliness, as of bygone times, set off by a Trio of pure charm showing Szymanowski already a master of the winning miniature. For the Finale, a portentous introduction leads to an ambitious fugue redolent of that in Franck's Prélude, Choral et Fugue in the large demands made on the soloist, though the lyric inspiration of the opening pages soon devolves into grandiose striving and turgid bombast. All the elements of a masterpiece are present, except the organic mastery that would come with the Piano Sonata No. 2. Meanwhile, the Sonata No. 1 took first prize in a competition organized by the Chopin Birth Centenary Committee held at Lwów, in 1910.

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