Rachmaninov Eb Minor?

[rapmasterb]

OK firstly the Rachmaninov 3rd concerto is an outstanding piece of music and the viruosity in it is just a bonus. Also, it was one of my favourite concerti before I saw "Shine".

Now that thats cleared up I can ask this ridiculous question:

Wouldn't it be a million times harder to play if every note in the piece was moved up by a semi-tone and it turned into Eb minor?

Imagine all those black notes in the places that are mercifully free of them. Let's face it d-minor is a very easy key all other things being equal (and they're not). If it was in Eb minor it would be truly finger-busting for anyone - now that would be difficulty.

[llamaman]

But music is not about difficulty, is it?

[pseudopianist]

But music is not about difficulty, is it?

Of course it is

[rapmasterb]

LOL - thanks mate.

[larse]

One of the greatest norwegian pianists through time, Robert Riefling, once played the entire Grieg Am Concerto in Bbm because by a coincidence they suddenly realized the concert piano was tuned wrong by a half note.

[fnork]

Brahms once started playing Beethovens Waldstein sonata and noticed that the piano was tuned a semitone too high... so he started playing it in B major instead 

[rapmasterb]

Was that not the "Kreutzer" violin sonata? I heard that he played it in b-flat at the keyboard because the piano was tuned a semitone to low (without rehearsal). Would it not have been easier to tune the violin down a bit? I mean the audience are hardly gong to notice a semitone and if they did they wouldnt really care.

But thats nothing to doing the grieg in b-flat minor. What a legend.

[BoliverAllmon]

I have alot of these stories. Someone was accompanying a soloist who was a semitone flat and immediately transposed the piano part to make the singer still sound good. I find that most of them are a bunch of crap.

[mlsmithz]

Whether these stories are true or not, one story that almost certainly is true is that Paganini's first violin concerto, which is generally performed in D major, was originally written in E-flat major, but Paganini wrote the solo part in D major and simply tuned his violin a semitone higher to give it a more strident tone. (This, of course, was just yet another instance of Paganini showing off what a great violinist he was and/or thought he was.) The orchestra parts were originally written in E-flat major, but to the best of my knowledge it has always been recorded in D major. (Anyone know if it has ever been recorded in E-flat major?)

Our first piano was tuned to a 415 Hz A (id est, the pitch used by many Baroque period instrument orchestras), and at times I used to transpose pieces up a semitone so that they would sound on our piano as they did on my teacher's piano, which was tuned to a standard 440 Hz A.  Never anything as difficult as the Grieg piano concerto, though (the only Grieg I knew back then was a simplified version of 'In the Hall of the Mountain King'!).

[orlandopiano]

I have alot of these stories. Someone was accompanying a soloist who was a semitone flat and immediately transposed the piano part to make the singer still sound good. I find that most of them are a bunch of crap.

I know someone personally who can do this. And yes, he can play Rachmaninoff 3rd in any key if you give him about 20 seconds to think about it first and don't mind it played a little slower. Pretty amazing stuff, but some people do have this ability.