Which one? the ones that are really difficult in technique, I don't mean pieces that are extremely long and boring.

flight of the bumblebee? I wouldnt know about the technique as I have never played it (or attemted it) I WISH!!!!

beethoven, moonlight sonata 3rd movement.

To name a few...
sorabji's opus clavicembalisticum
Godowsky 52 etudes on chopin etudes
Rachmaninoff third piano concerto
Balakirev islamey

My (unknowledgeable) guess would be Liszt cos al all his octaves? also Rachmaninov 3rd piano concerto....scary stuff....

QUOTE (Saxophonist @ May 5 2005, 04:39 PM)

flight of the bumblebee? I wouldnt know about the technique as I have never played it (or attemted it) I WISH!!!!

I love this piece!

anyway I think Piano concertos are difficult!

ohoh! and Chopin stuff like revolutionary etude and fantasy impromptu *dies*

Rachmaniov 2nd piano concerto.........not that i will ever learn that!

Probably ALL of the Rach concertos... and the Rhapsody...

QUOTE (sarah-flute @ May 5 2005, 07:20 PM)

Probably ALL of the Rach concertos... and the Rhapsody...

yeah. but they're so beautiful...i wish id be good enough to play them ever

Gaspard de la Nuit! Basically quite alot of Debussy and Ravel. Fantasie Impromptu and Flight of the Bumblebee aren't really as challenging as they sound when you actually sit down and try to play them, it's just getting it up to speed. I have heard of the opus clavicembalisticum, but unfortunately I've never actually heard the song itself - way too long, so no-one can put it on the internet.

Also Beethoven Hammerklavier Sonata, Liszt Bm Sonata, Prokofiev 2nd Concerto.....

I agree with chopet. I will also add to the list

Chopin's Etudes, Ballades
Liszt's Etudes, Transcriptions
Rach Etude-Tableaux

You can also try Bugatti Step (very nice and difficult, by Jaroslav Ježek, not well known czechoslovak componist). If you´d want more details or even the score of this piece, I can send it to you...

kingbull@centrum.cz

Surely the most difficult piece is the one you can play flawlessly in your living-room on your own piano, but when an examiner is listening in it feels as if you've never played the piece before!! Happens to me regularly!

For me Rachmaninov's 3rd concerto. I have performed many ridiculous pieces in my career, but this was the silliest. It nearly killed me.

Here is a story for you all. Cyril Smith was a leading British pianist of the 1930's,40's and 50's. According to a biography I read as a student in the 1970's, Smith was performing the piece regularly as a young man when he came upon a disc (presumably a roll) of Rachmaninov himself playing it. Smith listened to the disc and concluded that he was not good enough, so he fled to his parents' home and spent 10 hours a day, for a fortnight, learning to play the piece blindfold.

Ye Gods

I'm doing Grade 2 and the hardest piece I had to do was Ripstitch Rag (especially the middle bit!).

I'm DYING to listen to the 3rd Rachimanoff concerto...I've heard tens of tales it's one of the most difficult pieces, but there's no classical music store in the place where I live...

QUOTE (DGA @ May 19 2005, 11:58 AM)

I'm DYING to listen to the 3rd Rachimanoff concerto...I've heard tens of tales it's one of the most difficult pieces, but there's no classical music store in the place where I live...

By online DGA

I know you can get it from www.crotchet.co.uk (I know 'cos I just checked). Type 'Rachmaninov concertos' into the search box then scroll down to no 7 of the results page. There are several to choose from.

I bet Amazon have copies if you are not UK based (www.amazon.com).

Enjoy. The concerto is absolutely fantastic.

Scarbo by Ravel (last piece of Gaspard de la Nuit). It kills my hands

my top 3.

Liszt piano sonata in b minor.... for its emotion and monstrosity,
Chopin Piano sonata in b minor no.3....its has 10 themes in the 1st movement! enough said!
and....not that its as difficult as some other pieces, but its still very hard...schumanns Kreisleriana....very clever piece.

Certainly the Liszt's Transcendental Etudes
and Rach's Etudes-Tableaux~ (Op. 39 No.1 the most terrible)-*,
and the sonata mentioned above.

In my opinion, there's no such thing as a most difficult piece. Each hard piece is hard in its own way so it's a matter of personal taste for different people!

L a Campanella - Liszt.

AAAARRRRGHGGGGGGGHHHHHHH!!!!!

Yeah , Liszt Pagannini etudes! How do they play it?!

There is a video on Youtube where Yundi Li is playing La Campanella. It's amazing! He mucks it up in the end which is a shame but it's still very good. There are other people playing it as well but I saw him (I think) the other day at Regent Street in Central London but wasn't too sure. I sort of stared at him a bit but he didn't notice so I was ok. He had HUGE flowing black hair and a glamourous looking girlfriend. His clothes looked very expensive and his style was typical of Chinese celebs. Is he peforming here or is he on holiday?

I'm kind of kicking myself now because I didn't get an autograph.

Sorry I've gone off-topic.

The revolutionary etude isn't too hard. I learnt it when I was 15 and if you spend a long time learning the note patterns it all fits into place quite nicely.
Gutted about the autograph noodelz, I'm such a celeb spotter.

I think Bach is very very difficult - extremely complex fingerings and harmonies - turns one's brain to mush.

Although some of Debussy's art music is also similarly mind-crushing, but not in the same way...it takes more to paint the picture the composer is trying to portray.

Can't agree more. When learning any of Debussy's pieces , it doesn't take me so long to get it right technically . But who said Debussy is just notes to play.

I tried to quote La Chopiniste's subsequent post as well, but I still haven't figured out how to get two or more quotes into the one post - all help gratefully received...

Anyway! At one point, I think before the arrival of baby no. 4, I was working for a second performance diploma (which I never did), and was playing Bach's Italian Concerto. The first and third movement I had pretty well sussed, but I could not, for the life of me, make a job of the slow movement - which is sight-readable. My point is that "difficulty" is a subjective thing. The other two movements are much more technically demanding, but when they're there, they're there. But the difficulty in getting the cantabile and the mood of the middle movement just right, without romantasizing, really daunted me. I felt so exposed. The difference between it sounding childish, and it sounding fantastic, was so small, yet so immense.

agree.


ShArOn

Well, as a pianist for over 50 years, I've tried a lot of things , including some of the stuff mentioned above, but my vote goes to Balakirev's 'Islamey'. Its available as a free download, not sure off hand which site it was. Anyone else going to try ??

Islamey: An Oriental Fantasy by Mily Balakirev is considered one of the most difficult piano solos and it is said that even he himself had great difficulty playing it.
Many editions existing have numerous ossias (usually easier alternatives) to passages, because of the immense difficulty of the original. Its technical difficulty made it a favourite with virtuosi such as Franz Liszt and Nikolai Rubinstein (who premiered the piece).
When Maurice Ravel was writing his Gaspard de la Nuit (1908), based on 3 poems by Aloysius Bertrand, he told his disciple Maurice Delage that his goal was to write "pieces of transcendental virtuosity for the piano, more difficult than Balakirev's Islamey."
Ricardo Vines (the Spanish composer / pianist and gay friend of Frances Poulenc) went on to premiere the work.
Islamey was arranged for orchestra by Alfredo Casella shortly before Balakirev's death.
I played it last year, before leaving the States for the UK, to my college prof. He warned me that it was a reckless and dangerous thing to do. He was right, it was a complete disaster.

Press on " QUOTE" under the posts you want to quote (It will turn into red then), then press "ADD REPLY"

The most difficult piano piece...hehe I guess the sky's the limit! But for me, I'd have to say Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata 3rd Mvt was a killer, especially technically. Can't believe it's just DipABRSM. However, it was manageable, so I guess there's even harder.

Ive already posted here but have another id like to mention..... Ligeti etude's.
I have the sheet music for both books one and two of those at home but im afraid to try any

The thing about those is that I doubt very much if anyone listening would know whether what you were playing was right or wrong! I'd say that even an examiner would need to be holding a copy of the score, unless he'd played it himself!

Surely not, anyone of Grade 8 standard should be able to play it. There is much harder Beethoven.

My money would be on some of the Bach Fugues, especially with 4 or more voices, because of the control required to separated each voice.

But one could make an argument that the Prelude in C, Book 1 of WTC is very hard, because to make it beautiful, fresh and uniquely your interpretation would be a stern test of technique, especially if you try to remain authentic. This reminds me of a frankly bizarre rendition I heard of Debussy's Arabesque No 1 (which I recently studied for Grade 8). It was on a Russian pianist's website (sorry, can't remember any details) and he'd approached the problem of making a unique interpretation by playing it. incredibly. slowly. exceptfortheveryfastbitswhichheplayedveryveryveryfast. It was almost unlistenable.

Edward

That's a good point! It depends whether we're talking about getting all the notes right and in the right place, or whether we're talking about making a really good job of something. Anyway, what's the point in spending a year on something horrifically difficult (unless, of course there's a large amount of money involved!) when so few people will appreciate your efforts? That's fine for renowned concert pianists who will play in the Albert Hall and receive fame and acclaim (and lots of money... ) but for the majority of us, it's better to play something well that's achievable in a month or two. I know we all need to be challenged from time to time, but only if we know we will ultimately play it well.

There are composers nowadays who deliberately compose pieces which are almost impossible to play. It's very modern and dissonant however.

Peter Maxwell davies piano concerto - not worth the energy learning in my opinion.


Anyone heard of the pianist who could play all Bachs keyboard music from memory!??!?

That's 240 hours worth and quite an impossible feat - though obviously not quite

I wonder if Bach could have done that himself... ...I wrote a few bits and pieces over the last year and can't remember what key they're in...

From time to time I play the easier ones of Shostakovitches Preludes and Fugues, but the B flat minor fugue I can hardly play the starting theme, certainly no further than the 'second' entry of the subject.
These wonderful pieces were written for Tatiana Nikolayeva. Whilst recitalling the whole series in New York she collapsed during the B Flat Minor Fugue, and died shortly afterwards. She recorded them twice, I prefer the later version on Hyperion. (Her Bach '48', on which Shost modelled his work is pretty good also)

Are you sure that they are all Bach's keyboard music?

Gosh, that rings a bell...I remember googling that piece once, when I was studying it for G8, and I think I came across that site. I've heard loads of renditions of Arabesque 1; some I think are purely works of genius, and some (I think like the one described) that I just thought were plain weird.

Oh dear

The ones I think are weird are probably just plain genius playing that isn't really my 'thing'

rhapsody in blue sounds difficult - there has to be alot of techinque work in that one!

The Butterfly, on the old G7 syllabus, was plain evil... Though I expect there's much harder out there.

I can play Flight of the Bumblebee, Its not actually as hard as it sounds, its just getting to grips with all of the notes, starting off slowly and gradually speeding it up. And it is made up of the chromatic scale which i personally don't think is as hard as common scales. It really helps improve your technique once you can play it. I think that one of Lizst's Hungarian Rhapsodys lies high up on the difficulty scale. All those really long trills that somehow manage to fit just about every note on the piano in them in the space of one bar. Baba Yaga from Pictures at an Exhibition is also a very difficult piece and hard to coordinate.