There are few great composers whose miniatures seem so problematic as those of Sibelius. Grieg, Paderewski, Rakhmaninov, Chabrier, Debussy and Ravel have all at some point been criticised for their preference for working in smaller genres, but Sibelius is a rather different case. His achievements in large-scale symphonic forms are widely recognised, but his miniatures have often been neglected or misunderstood and demand critical re-evaluation. The majority of Sibelius's smaller works were written for the piano, and his piano music has been the object of particular critical scorn. According to the English critic Cecil Gray, who held a lofty opinion of Sibelius as a symphonist, it was strange that Sibelius wrote so many pieces for an instrument that he did not understand and that he reputedly disliked. Gray stated that Sibelius's piano works were ‘for the most part completely undistinguished in conception and musical substance’, and concluded that ‘they are also singularly ineffective from the point of view of the instrument’. Gray also felt that Sibelius's piano music suffered by comparison with his other works, and that, ‘so far from there being any discernible process of development from the early [piano pieces] to the late, the contrary rather is the truth … and the latest volumes are definitely the weakest’.