Wich is the composer that made the hardest music

[ALVARO_M]

wich is??

[BoliverAllmon]

Depends, I think liszt wrote some very hard music to play, but Mozart's music is very difficult to play well. There is a huge difference.

boliver

[Noah]

Sorabji

[The Tempest]

Technically the most difficult composers would have to be Liszt and Rachmaninoff.

Maybe Scriabin as well, but I don't know anything about him.

[liszmaninopin]

I am inclined to learn towards Rachmaninoff as the most difficult composer that is fairly widely known.  Amongst more unusual composers, I would have to suggest that Alkan and Sorabji can be extraodrinarily difficult.

[allchopin]

I think we're forgetting Godowsky

[steinwaymodeld]

There are a lot, and as difficulty have no absolute scaling, i will give you some idea of the most difficult pieces and composers.
(And among them, i will pick Liszt, Godowsky and Alkan)

Liszt (he is like the label of difficult pieces)
eg: Feux Follets, Concerto 1, Sonata in Bb.....

Rachmaninoff
eg: Rach3, Rach2, Rach Sonata, some etude tableux...

Scriabin
eg: Sonata NO.9,8,7.... etudes...

Provokiev
eg: Sonatas...etudes..

Tchkovisky(i always have problem with his name)
Eg: Tch1

Alkan(Always being ignored, but some of his work is impossible)
eg: Etude Op.39 No.8,9,10,11(Symphony for piano solo, COncerto for piano solo)... Sonata(the life sonata, with 4 movemtn about a man in his 20,30,40,50)

Godowsky
53 Chopin Godowsky Etude
44 Variations, Cadenza, and Fugue on the Opening of Schubert's 'Unfinished' Symphony (horowitz once said he avoided this piece because "he doesn't have 4 hands to play it")

Balakirev
Oriental Fantasy - Islamey(was once called the 'most difficult and impossible piece for piano solo')

Ravel

Gaspard de la Nuit: 3 Poems for Piano after Aloysius Bertrand(intended to took over the 'most difficult piano solo piece' from the Islamey by the composer, the composer couldn't even play it himself)(divided into Ondine, The Gallows, Scarbo)

Beethoven
some of his late sonata, include the most impossible one, the only piece Liszt couldn't sight-read and spent 2 months to 'study', Hammerkleiv sonata.

Henselt
His piano concerto,and etudes, Anton Rubinstein once said it is waste of time trying to master those piece. Cause Henselt was like Paganini, was a freak.

For transcription

Busoni
His bach-busoni transcription, la campanella, actually all the pagnini etudes
Horowitz
HR2,HR6,HR15,HR19, Mephisto Waltz, Rach sonata, CARMEN FANTASY, stars and stripes forever, wedding march, military march....
Cziffra
yea, the mighty cziffra, who wouldn't know the crazy OCTAVE BUMBLE BEE!!!!!! (and once again, playing the whole Grand Galop Chromatique in 2:57 is not the only inhuman achivement he did)

Hamelin
Last but not least, Busoni of our time. Made all those best and most difficult recording(include complete Godowsky etudes and Alkan's work)
his transcriptiosn are equally crazy too
Of course the famous one

Triple etude= Chopin etude Op.10 No.2 + op.25 No.4 + Op.25 No.11

Black key etudes, Rossini La Danza, HR2, La Campanella...(The craziest LC ever written)

[liordavid]

I will say Glauzonov

[magio]

Many composers made insanely hard pieces.
Some of them are Ravel,Rachmaninoff,Ligetti,Sorabji,Xenakis and Hamelin of course.

[54545]

Liszt for piano. I know there are others but their works are either terrible or are forgotten for some reason.

Liszt is at the top and then rachmaninoff is right behind him.

Paganini is probably the hardest of all the composers. I read he could bend his thumb a certain way to play things that are physically impossible for a normal hand. Supposedly Paginini had a missing joint or something and could do this and has since been regarded as the best violinist, because he took advantage of a defect in his hand. Plus he influenced the above composers so he is the toughest composer ever.

[birba]

I wonder if ALVARO is still around...

[thalbergmad]

If he is, he is probably retired.

Thal

[ch101]

did anyone mention wtc bach? it is almost impossible to get all of them perfectly.

[stevebob]

I wonder if W.T.C. Bach is related to C.P.E. Bach (or even P.D.Q. Bach).   

[thalbergmad]

Thanks stevebob for reviving a thread when the last post was over 6 minutes ago.

Thal

[pianoplayjl]

If talking about pre 20th century, I think Liszt. Thalberg deserves mention too because many of his pieces are epic.

[ladychopin]

There are a lot, and as difficulty have no absolute scaling, i will give you some idea of the most difficult pieces and composers.
(And among them, i will pick Liszt, Godowsky and Alkan)

Liszt (he is like the label of difficult pieces)
eg: Feux Follets, Concerto 1, Sonata in Bb.....

Rachmaninoff
eg: Rach3, Rach2, Rach Sonata, some etude tableux...


eg: Sonata NO.9,8,7.... etudes...

Provokiev
eg: Sonatas...etudes..

Tchkovisky(i always have problem with his name)
Eg: Tch1

Alkan(Always being ignored, but some of his work is impossible)
eg: Etude Op.39 No.8,9,10,11(Symphony for piano solo, COncerto for piano solo)... Sonata(the life sonata, with 4 movemtn about a man in his 20,30,40,50)

Godowsky
53 Chopin Godowsky Etude
44 Variations, Cadenza, and Fugue on the Opening of Schubert's 'Unfinished' Symphony (horowitz once said he avoided this piece because "he doesn't have 4 hands to play it")

Balakirev
Oriental Fantasy - Islamey(was once called the 'most difficult and impossible piece for piano solo')

Ravel

Gaspard de la Nuit: 3 Poems for Piano after Aloysius Bertrand(intended to took over the 'most difficult piano solo piece' from the Islamey by the composer, the composer couldn't even play it himself)(divided into Ondine, The Gallows, Scarbo)

Beethoven
some of his late sonata, include the most impossible one, the only piece Liszt couldn't sight-read and spent 2 months to 'study', Hammerkleiv sonata.

Henselt
His piano concerto,and etudes, Anton Rubinstein once said it is waste of time trying to master those piece. Cause Henselt was like Paganini, was a freak.

For transcription

Busoni
His bach-busoni transcription, la campanella, actually all the pagnini etudes
Horowitz
HR2,HR6,HR15,HR19, Mephisto Waltz, Rach sonata, CARMEN FANTASY, stars and stripes forever, wedding march, military march....
Cziffra
yea, the mighty cziffra, who wouldn't know the crazy OCTAVE BUMBLE BEE!!!!!! (and once again, playing the whole Grand Galop Chromatique in 2:57 is not the only inhuman achivement he did)

Hamelin
Last but not least, Busoni of our time. Made all those best and most difficult recording(include complete Godowsky etudes and Alkan's work)
his transcriptiosn are equally crazy too
Of course the famous one

Triple etude= Chopin etude Op.10 No.2 + op.25 No.4 + Op.25 No.11

Black key etudes, Rossini La Danza, HR2, La Campanella...(The craziest LC ever written)

What opus is beethoven's sonata?

[rachmaninoff_forever]

Come on now, Sorabji blows away Liszt and all of the other romantic and classical composers mentioned.  Not even close.  And I'm sure there are people even harder than him.

[emrysmerlin]

Come on now, Sorabji blows away Liszt and all of the other romantic and classical composers mentioned.  Not even close.  And I'm sure there are people even harder than him.

How are we supposed to know if Sorabji is not just extremely lengthy and difficult to read?

[the89thkey]

Rachmaninov, both technically and musically.
Also Liszt wrote many very difficult works.

[picsatsofron]

What opus is beethoven's sonata?

of the late sonatas, probably op. 101, 106, 109, 110, 111 these are all quite difficult with 106 being the hardest

but let's not forget the Waldstein and Appassionata sonatas. I believe richter said that a case could be made for the appassionata as the most difficult of them all...

[ajec0323]

Sorabji. Music is 5 staves and pieces are 8 hours long

[anacrusis]

Does anybody even play Sorabji? It seems like he wrote a ton of horribly different music that nobody is interested in.

[perfect_pitch]

Does anybody even play Sorabji? It seems like he wrote a ton of horribly different music that nobody is interested in.

That's my thoughts exactly, but we don't say it too loudly or a particular user usually has a hissy fit about anyone disparaging Sorabji.

[lostinidlewonder]

Not to mention any concert where his music is done certainly doesn't have a large audience. Most would walk out before the end of an 8 hour program lol just then the pianist and their friends listening lol. Such a waste of time learning such works for performance imho. His music is good for sight reading extension work though.

[perfect_pitch]

His music is good for sight reading extension work though.

Maybe, but so is Bartok - and I'd rather sight-read his works over Sorabji's.

[ahinton]

Does anybody even play Sorabji? It seems like he wrote a ton of horribly different music that nobody is interested in.

Since you ask (and presumably you have omitted to do the necessary research before doing so), there are more than 60 CDs of Sorabji's music out there, so the answer would rather obviously appear to be in the affirmative! That some three quarters of his scores have been typeset by editors/scholars and there have been numerous broadcasts and almost 1,000 public performances of it in more than 30 countries would seem to back this up.

By the way, although some of his pieces are indeed long enough to need to be the sole work on a programme, at least two thirds of them would fit neatly into one half of a conventional length recital.

Best,

Alistair

[anacrusis]

Since you ask (and presumably you have omitted to do the necessary research before doing so), there are more than 60 CDs of Sorabji's music out there, so the answer would rather obviously appear to be in the affirmative! That some three quarters of his scores have been typeset by editors/scholars and there have been numerous broadcasts and almost 1,000 public performances of it in more than 30 countries would seem to back this up.

By the way, although some of his pieces are indeed long enough to need to be the sole work on a programme, at least two thirds of them would fit neatly into one half of a conventional length recital.

Best,

Alistair

Cool, I didn't know that. I have seen some YouTube videos with like Sorabji midi or something and it was pretty long and awful, but that was years ago. What do you appreciate about his music?

[ahinton]

Cool, I didn't know that. I have seen some YouTube videos with like Sorabji midi or something and it was pretty long and awful, but that was years ago. What do you appreciate about his music?

Not misrepresentations of it in MIDI format, that's for sure, as many of these provide little ore than unintended caricature of how it should sound in the hands of the real live performers from whom it was intended!

What DO I appreciate? A great sense of narrative, of line, of pianistic imagination (in the piano works, obviously!), sheer expressive power and ways of writing that mark him out as recognisably different to everyone else apart from the fact of his being very much a part of an ongoing Western "classical" musical tradition; those of his forebears whose work he so passonately admired might give some cl'ue as to his overall position in that Western canon - Bach, (late) Beethoven, Chopin, Liszt, Alkan, Albéniz, Debussy, Busoni, Granados, Rachmaninoff, Ravel, Medtner, Szymanowski and so on...

Best,

Alistair

[perfect_pitch]

What DO I appreciate? A great sense of narrative, of line, of pianistic imagination (in the piano works, obviously!), sheer expressive power and ways of writing that mark him out as recognisably different to everyone else apart from the fact of his being very much a part of an ongoing Western "classical" musical tradition; those of his forebears whose work he so passonately admired might give some cl'ue as to his overall position in that Western canon - Bach, (late) Beethoven, Chopin, Liszt, Alkan, Albéniz, Debussy, Busoni, Granados, Rachmaninoff, Ravel, Medtner, Szymanowski and so on...

Oh please... yes, his music might set him apart from others - but so does Steve Reich or John Cage, but most of them are ridiculed for their musical abominations. Same goes for Jackson Pollock in the Art world. Some of his paintings are LITERALLY just smecks and blocks of paint on a canvas that people claim are worth millions.



I mean seriously, give a kid enough hours in the day, plenty of paint and tell them to create a mess, you'll get something very much like the above picture... and it sure as sh*t wouldn't be worth millions of dollars.

Ongoing 'classical' tradition??? I think the classical tradition broke around the turn of the 1900's where music became more clinical. People used music and the art world as social experiments to see if they could create music differently, but in doing so usually turned their art into political statements, experiments, or just made fun of the traditional classical forms and harmonies calling them 'antiquated'.

Look at John Cage's 4'33" or ASALP (I think that's the name), or even Steve Reich's clapping hands. Most of it is a curiosity, but in the long run bears no resemblance, depth or beauty to the music music created by Bach, (late) Beethoven, Chopin, Liszt, Alkan, Albéniz, Debussy, Busoni, Granados, Rachmaninoff, Ravel, Medtner or Szymanowski, if we're being honest.

[ahinton]

You asked me a question about what I appreciate in Sorabji's music and I answered it to the best of my ability based upon many years of experience of it.

You wrote
"his music might set him apart from others - but so does Steve Reich or John Cage, but most of them are ridiculed for their musical abominations"; who is ridiculing Reich, Cage or Sorabji for their alleged "musical abominations"?

You then wrote
"I mean seriously, give a kid enough hours in the day, plenty of paint and tell them to create a mess, you'll get something very much like the above picture... and it sure as sh*t wouldn't be worth millions of dollars"
You refer here to the Jackson Pollock that you reproduced above; give a kid enough hours in the day, a Bösendorfer 290 and tell them to do something and what you will not get is a performnce of Sorabji's Sequentia Cyclica!

You then note
"Ongoing 'classical' tradition??? I think the classical tradition broke around the turn of the 1900's where music became more clinical. People used music and the art world as social experiments to see if they could create music differently, but in doing so usually turned their art into political statements, experiments, or just made fun of the traditional classical forms and harmonies calling them 'antiquated'."  Your view and the material upon which you seek to express it is gravely abd clearly limited by its selectivity; you mention the turn of the past century yet seem oblivious the the vast variety of fine music written between then and the outbreak of WWI by such composers as Elgar, Strauss, Magnard, Schmitt, Debussy, Mahler, Busoni, Ravel, Scriabin and so very many others.

Lastly, you write
"Look at John Cage's 4'33" or ASALP (I think that's the name), or even Steve Reich's clapping hands. Most of it is a curiosity, but in the long run bears no resemblance, depth or beauty to the music music created by Bach, (late) Beethoven, Chopin, Liszt, Alkan, Albéniz, Debussy, Busoni, Granados, Rachmaninoff, Ravel, Medtner or Szymanowski, if we're being honest" but I was looking at neither; Sorabji is very much in the traditions of those composers whom you rightly mention here.

Best,

Alistair

[perfect_pitch]

You asked me a question about what I appreciate in Sorabji's music and I answered it to the best of my ability based upon many years of experience of it.

Nope... I'm pretty sure no one asked what you appreciate about it. Anacrusis mentioned it, and like Beetlejuice - you come out of nowhere.

[ahinton]

Nope... I'm pretty sure no one asked what you appreciate about it. Anacrusis mentioned it, and like Beetlejuice - you come out of nowhere.

It was indeed Anacrusis who asked the question (see the post on 22 March); I am not in the habit of answering questions that have not been asked!

Best,

Alistair

[hmoll53]

Some more common composers in the standard Rep/Pre second half 20th century music that are generally considered extremely difficult. Not a complete list btw, just some people that came up to my mind

Liszt (Reminisces are difficult, same with Trans. Paganini as well as Feux Follets. Beet Symphony Transcriptions are the most difficult)
Alkan (Well, he has too many difficult pieces. Symphony + Concerto for Solo Piano)
Rachmaninoff (Rach 3, Sonata 1, Sonata 2 1913 Version)
Scriabin (Sonata 5,7 and 8 are virtually extreme in standard rep)
Medtner (Some of the Sonatas are quite intimidating)
Brahms (Paganini Variations are a nutjob)
Ravel (Same logic with Brahms)
Ives (Sonata 2)
Feinberg (Sonata 3 and 6)
Busoni (Fantasia Contrapunctualwhatever)
Szymanowski (Sonata 2 and 3)
Roslavets (Sonata 1)
Bartok (Etudes Op.18 and some others)
Barber (Sonata)
Mereaux (Etude 45 and 60)
Prokofiev (Sonata 8 is insane)
Schoenberg
Reger

Some more contemporary ones
Ornstein (Sonatas)
Ligeti
Ferneyhough
Stockhausen
Xenakis (Name like a type of drug, his music sounds like drugs too)
Sorabji (Literally anything he wrote)
Marc Andre Hamelin (Triple Chopin Etude)
Messiaen (20 Looks at Baby Jesus or whatever it's called)
Boulez (Sonata)
Godowsky (Chopin Etudes, Passacaglia)
Cziffra (Lol this guys is like the modern Liszt)

[brogers70]

I mean seriously, give a kid enough hours in the day, plenty of paint and tell them to create a mess, you'll get something very much like the above picture... and it sure as sh*t wouldn't be worth millions of dollars.

I love looking at Pollock's paintings. There's more to Pollock than random, childish messiness.

Short version
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/now-computer-can-differentiate-between-real-jackson-pollocks-and-fakes-180954300/

Longer version
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cocktail-party-physics/httpblogsscientificamericancomcocktail-party-physics20110718physicists-embrace-the-splatter-master/

Of course, if you don't like the paintings, you don't like them; nothing wrong with that.  I prefer the Impressionists to the Baroque (in visual arts). It's all just personal preference.

[lostinidlewonder]

Black midi crushes all the suggestions so far.

Plenty of other examples to check, end of story.

[perfect_pitch]

I love looking at Pollock's paintings. There's more to Pollock than random, childish messiness.

Mmmm - I'm still not convinced. When we allow tripe to be considered art, we dilute the very definition of the integrity given to create something beautiful... and what is crass, inadequate and meaningless.

I still consider Pollock a pillock.

[brogers70]

Mmmm - I'm still not convinced. When we allow tripe to be considered art, we dilute the very definition of the integrity given to create something beautiful... and what is crass, inadequate and meaningless.

I still consider Pollock a pillock.

Yes. You don't like Pollock. Everyone has their preferences. There's lots of other art to look at. Still, I find Pollock's painting beautiful and mesmerizing.

[transitional]

Oh, Mozart, for sure. Has anyone tried playing those K 576 3rd mvt triplets perfectly (as Mozart music demands), evenly (as all music needs), Mozarty (obviously) and to emphasize the counterpoint? not to mention the technical difficulties!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I'd even consider K 545 at the same difficulty as the first part of HR 2 (just play the cadenzas slowly and you'll be fine).