Debussy had decided at the end of 1901 to entrust the premiere of his new piano work, Pour le piano, to a young Catalan pianist, Ricardo Viñes, who had been living in Paris for roughly fifteen years. He was a good friend of Maurice Ravel and had earned his first prize in piano at the Conservatoire in 1894. Enthusiastic by nature, his tastes in literature and painting—for Poe, Baudelaire, Huysmans, and Odilon Redon—could not have failed to appeal to Debussy. The composer had heard him play at the Société nationale and had confessed to Ravel that he liked his sound very much. On 30 November 1901, Viñes came to the rue Cardinet to play Debussy's new suite by heart for both the composer and Ravel; he then returned two more times, once in the presence of Lucien Garban, to perform the work for Debussy, who seemed very satisfied. This was the beginning of a collaboration that would last for more than ten years. The first public hearing of the “Prelude”–“Sarabande”– “Toccata” took place on 11 January 1902 at the Société nationale, to which Debussy was ever faithful, and, as Viñes wrote in his diary: “It was such a phenomenal success […] that I could have encored everything.” In fact, the only movement that was given an encore was the “Toccata,” which at times reminded the critic for the Guide musical of “the good humor of Emmanuel Chabrier.”

In his column in Le temps, Pierre Lalo lavished high praise for the work, while repeating the remark he had already made concerning the Nocturnes: “We are most often swept away by its magic, but irritated at times by being subjected to its spell.” The other, more banal critics noticed the “harmonic rustlings” (Samazeuilh) and the “colorful and picturesque pages” (Dandelot) of a score that was the first of the masterpieces for piano from the composer's maturity.