Here we go again; "what's the hardest?" blah blah. OK, I realise that this is a very old thread that's recently been bumped for some unaccountable reason, but that's no excuse. I wonder if it willl ever be possible to convince those who initiate - and many of those who subsequently contribute to - such threads that what's "hard", or even what's "easy", for some players is less so for others and that, as a consequence, there can and will never be any meaningful and realistic consensus on any single work being the "hardest" or the "easiest" in its category.
Whilst it is therefore impossible to pick just one candidate for either "accolade", it might be argued that the concerti that present the highest levels of general difficulty to the greatest number of pianists (and, although the thread title does not actually specify piano concertos, I presume that this was nevertheless the intended subject) probably include Finnissy's Concerto No. 4 and the Concerto from Alkan's 12 minor key études Op. 39 (each of which is for piano alone) and the Busoni, the two by Brahms, the inevitable and oft-cited Rakhmaninov No. 3, Dillon's Andromeda and nos. 8, 9 and 10 from Sorabji's series of 11 works for piano and orchestra (which are all concertos in reality, even though only the first eight are so entitled), although I would not pretend that even this represents any kind of comprehensive list; again, as to the easiest, there must be many candidates for that one!
Best,
Alistair
Topic: The easiest and Hardest Concerti ever written