Marc-André Hamelin wasn't the only - or even the first - composer besides Godowsky to write a piano study based around combining Chopin's three A minor études; I did it myself in 1977 and entitled it Les Trois Chopins but, when I later discovered that the 11 or 12 missing and unpublished Chopin/Godowsky études included a version of this, I decided that the correct fate of mine was being deposited in the waste bin. Years later, when Marc-André and I were discussing his own Triple Étude after Chopin (posted above) which he had just played to me, I told him about that and he expressed regret that I had chosen to dispose of mine; he then wondered if I might ever think to try to reconstruct it from memory. After some pondering, I took him up on this and rewrote it much better than my original; this is more of a new piece than a revision of an old one and it incorporates many fleeting allusions to other Chopin études. It is dedicated to Marc-André and entitled Étude en forme de Chopin; it's very different to Marc-André's.
But to return to those "missing, presumed lost" Chopin/Godowsky études; the pianist and Godowsky scholar Charles Hopkins (1952-2007) spent many years researching for a substantial volume on Godowsky which he sadly did not live to complete and, as part of his work on it, he interviewed Godowsky's grandson (who was born in the year Godowsky died and who himself died in 2011). Charles told me that he was convinced that a box in the room where he did this contained some or all of these "missing" studies but that the box was not to be opened. So, who knows whether these pieces might surface some day?
Best,
Alistair
Topic: The magic of Chopin etudes?