A work that can be considered a culmination of Bartók's earliest period. The first version, as a piano work, was composed in 1904 and premiered in 1905. At this time, Bartók had not yet established his unique style in piano works. It is fundamentally a 19th-century Romantic work, employing traditional harmonic language. Its impressive features include the grand swells created by the left-hand arpeggios and the Gypsy-style melodies.

It consists of a slow, fantasia-like section and a rapid finale, with the opening motif reappearing at the end. In the finale, the tempo progressively increases, a form that adheres to the 19th-century Hungarian musical tradition. Furthermore, it exhibits a type of cyclic form, showing structural influence from Liszt. It is a technically demanding piece with a virtuosic character.

The second version was arranged as a Rhapsody for piano and orchestra. Bartók submitted this to the Rubinstein Competition in Paris in 1905 but was unsuccessful.

Around the same time as the composition of this piece, Bartók was deeply moved by the songs sung by a Hungarian peasant housekeeper. Subsequently, he began systematically collecting and notating folk songs in earnest, in order to research folk music.