Amen!
The writing kept getting more contrapuntal…
Yep, I’m on board with that as well.
Having said that he did compose very little in his last couple yrs due to weakness and illness mostly, I don’t think it was a lack of inspiration.
I’d give op25 the slight edge musically but op10 the slight edge technically - mainly for Op10no1 being the ultimate right hand arpeggio etude ever written and op10no2 being the definitive outer finger etude.
Also op10 actually has my favourite etude musically - 10/4 which I feel is quite Bach influenced - but taken to a new level of surging fury. I think it shows the slight influence of this prelude -
Nope, I disagree with that in the case of of the Etudes. Opus 10 is the work of a stunningly original young genius - already all elements of his style are there. For me, ALL works of opus 10 are masterpieces, while there are several pieces in Opus 25 that are a bit less inspired IMO (nos 2, 3, 6, 8) - but still great music of course.
I’m on board with that too. 
The billboard smash hits are in Op.10, save the WW perhaps. I find Op.25 a bit richer, but not indispensable in the same way as Op.10.
Yes, somehow I keep coming back to opus 10, more than to opus 25, indispensable is the word. It’s also about personal preferences and it’s difficult to be completely objective about what opus has more purely musical quality in total. Same with Bach’s WTC 1 and WTC 2.
I thought of the exact same parallell. I find the music in Bach’s Book II richer than in Book I, but yet I have listened more to Book I. One is more striking, the other more rewarding, as it were - as with the Chopin sets.
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Queztion -
If CHOP lived longa, wut wud hiz 3rd zet ov Chopetz look/zound lyk?
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Great?
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Dey wud look lyk da preludez 
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Or harzhly da nouvelle etudez
Ahahaha or he wud try to
zimplify da op10 n op25 den republizh 
Da 10/1 wud becummah a AFAP etude n da 10/2 becummah da bee tru
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Haha da way da Chop wuz progrezzin I predickt da Chop wud be writin ZCRIBETZ in hiz 80z
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Well… he deepened and matured as a composer, but from around when he arrived in Paris to the end of his life he by and large remained the same Chop. Remember the 1st Scherzo, maybe his most radical composition, dates from his early 20s. And I find the Mazurkas for instance really hard to date.
Chopin’s death at such an early age is the tragedy of western classical music AFAIC, and I think we would have had two or three times the amount of amazing music he already left if someone had forgotten a dirty bacteria sample in the lab 100 years earlier, but personally I think he would have continued to play the role he did in the 30s and 40s. Chopin wouldn’t have been outrun in the same way, since impressionism and Prokofievism etc were far away, but I’ve thought about this with Mozart too. You could argue he was on his way towards romanticism with his dramatic late operas and K.475 for instance, but I really can’t see him becoming a fully fledged Beethoven/Schubert… let alone Chopin or Liszt. We’ll never know in either case though.
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Or he would have quit and gone into law 
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Well alzo bear in mind da CHOP barely compozed afta he wuz about 35, and hiz lazt few yrz wuz zicknezz leadin to death
Ma propozition iz fo a FULL HEALTH Chop
I believ dat da CHOP wud haf had a TECH to rival da PIMP if he had hiz health n wuznt zo weak
That’s a really interesting part too. His works are incredibly demanding for their time, maybe second only to Liszt’s (rather impossible) things from the 30s, and no one who heard both put one above the other as far as I know. In spite of his fragile state he really does appear to have been one of the titans of the 19th C, and a more competent rival to Liszt than Thalberg ever was.
Da 
wuz greatly admired by da Chop but a painfully zhy n inzecure mofo by all accountz
Yeah… I think it’s clear that any one of these mofos who were known to have a strong tech, was also an impressive pianist. That they had a musical mind out of the ordinary kinda comes across through their compositions. And in Chopin’s case it must have been so striking that even advanced tuberculosis didn’t significantly hold him back.
Or well it would definitely have significantly held him back, but not the experience of hearing him.