i have a little something to add...
people are getting carried away here for a few reasons:
one, this is the internet, people can claim whatever they want, and even believe what they claim... but reality and fiction are very different things...
its simply, a person who has been playing for 6 months hears things differently from a person who has been playing for 20 years...
what one may call "finished" can to another person be a first read...
what i mean is, maybe the poster here, feels he has finished the music... when in fact to a more experienced player... there is much work to be done.
Also, on another note, the poster has "started" the etudes and such,
when they are at correct tempo and correctly interpreted, they will be done... not until then...
therefore, there is nothing amazing about the progress at hand... simply because, i can get my pet TUNA to start the GODOWSKY studies and the ALKAN concerto, etc etc...
of course, he wont get passed the first measure (he does try hard), but, he is working on them

i dont mean to imply that the poster, cant play the pieces at all... only that in reality most people who say they are finished with something within the first months of lessons, usually find out that people who have been playing for years have a more discriminating way of looking at things...