Hardest piece ever created?

[shlnsengumi]

Was wondering what is considered around here to be the hardest piece of piano music ever written, so I can look forward to it as a life time goal to be able to play.

[thalbergmad]

I have a strange feeling that if you use the search function, you might find this has been discussed before.

Thal

[ahinton]

Was wondering what is considered around here to be the hardest piece of piano music ever written, so I can look forward to it as a life time goal to be able to play.

You might first like to have a look around this forum and then count up the number of threads on this and like topics that have already been circulating here...

Best,

Alistair

[jakev2.0]

Hardest worthwhile pieces?

Godowsky's studies on Chopin' Etudes.

[rob47]

3rd mvt. of the moonlight sonata maybe?

[mikey6]

Beethoven's variations on a Swiss Leid.
Seriously though (as mentioned), do a search for 'hardest piece' and you'll have 3 days worth of reading!!

[pianowelsh]

hardest piece to read ? hardest piece to play? hardest piece to interpret?

[klick]

Minuet in G.

[Etude]

This topic has definitely never been done before.

[opus10no2]

Chopin opus10no2 in 50 seconds.

[pianowelsh]

I sense a touch of sarcasm Etude.  This thread is often done. In fact its been done so many times now im contemplating writing and insanely difficult piece just to bring in some new discussion.  op10/2 really isnt one of the hardest pieces ever. Ok its difficult but there are many many more complexed works which overall are more challlenging to bring off. In terms of contemporary scores there are some that are so complicated you pretty much need an instruction manual to be able to sightread them (if ture sightreading is really even possible). There are some pieces which look notationally very easy but are hideously difficult to play in a convincing way.  Ravels Gaspard de la nuit, Stravinsky's petrushka and Balakirevs islamey were written with the goal of being 'challenging' but they are all total art works they tax you musically technically and when they were written the notational aspect of them was also unfamilar. Today people like op10/2 hack them off. Just goes to show the changes that some with time. I think new music is always automatically harder to get to grips with because its unfamiliar.

[opus10no2]

I said IN 50 SECONDS.

If a pianist were to achieve this without cheating, this would be the single most impressive feat of virtuosity in history.

After all, that's what this is about - playing Sorabji's Opus Clavicembalisticum like Ogdon or Madge, or Finnissy's Solo Concerto no4 like Pace.....is LESS impressive from a finger virtuosity perspective than a supremely fast 10/2.

[imbetter]

Chopin opus10no2 in 50 seconds.

lmao i wana see you play it in 50 seconds. after hearing your 25/12 and 10/1 im sure it wont be a big problem for you

[webern78]

I really think people should name those threads 'hardest piece ever created that's still worth listening to'.

[Etude]

I really think people should name those threads 'hardest piece ever created that's still worth listening to'.

What with everyone having the same taste in music and all...

[andhow04]

DE HARDIST PIECE is STILL N ALWAYZ W'LL BE

OPUS CLAMBICELLARSTATICUMILLI

HAY HAY!

[pianowolfi]

LOL

 

Beethoven's variations on a Swiss Leid.

And mikey 6, if you spell it "Leid" instead of "Lied" it means "Swiss suffering" rofl

[ahinton]

hardest piece to read ? hardest piece to play? hardest piece to interpret?

Hardest piece to have to read about its alleged status as the "hardest piece"?...

Best,

Alistair

[ahinton]

playing Sorabji's Opus Clavicembalisticum like Ogdon or Madge, or Finnissy's Solo Concerto no4 like Pace.....is LESS impressive from a finger virtuosity perspective than a supremely fast 10/2.

But never mind 10/2 for a moment - what about either of those other two works played by Powell, then?...

Best,

Alistair

[opus10no2]

Still the same, performing those works is primarily a feat of brain virtuosity.

I would have to find an impressive display of mechanique in his recordings and compare it with a score to tell just how impressive it is from a mechanical-virtuoso perspective.

See, these are the 2 primary factors people use when considering the difficulty of a piece - the brain-virtuosity difficulty of the sheer complexity of note figuration and disputation, and the 'randomness' involved.
Choosing the 'most difficult' in this area is a rather silly thing to do, as I can easily make a piece with just a few more notes in it and say it's more difficult.
The other, as I've said, is the mech-virtuoso factor, which again isn't completely without problems, to determine a level of difficulty one must predefine a specific tempo.

You could say that there are pieces which are very difficult in both perspectives, but it is apparent that notes and figurations have to be INGRAINED in a pianist's reflexes and muscle memory to be performed at peak conditions.
In overly complex works, pianists simply don't have the time to ingrain every figuration to the utmost efficiency, and they rely on sheer brain virtuosity - which is basically SIGHT-READING from memory, or in some cases - literally sight-reading.

This is why, to determine a pianist's technical ability, we must hear them in pieces which are ingrained in their pianistic subconcious, and in their fingers.

Sure, theoretically this could be done is Sorabji's and Finnissy's longer and more complex works, with ALOT of work, but the music is of such a nature that it would render it pointless.

This is why more streamlined and relatively simpler music is much better suited for a display of technical ability - particularly the Chopin etudes, which exercise each of their chosen technical figurations at length and provide merciless evidence of the pianist's technical abilities.

[nocturnelover]

Does anyone have an opinion on which of the Chopin Nocturnes is the most difficult to play? I though it might be No.13 in C minor Op.48 No.1

[opus10no2]

Technically, I'd agree.

The final section is probably the most tricky part of any Chopin nocturne because it is extended, and it's difficulty would depend on the speed.

Although also, there is small difficult runs and figurations in others, though they are only brief.

[ihatepop]

the c major scale

ihatepop

[opus10no2]

the c major scale

ihatepop

Depending on the speed, perhaps this could be true.

[avetma]

Does anyone have an opinion on which of the Chopin Nocturnes is the most difficult to play? I though it might be No.13 in C minor Op.48 No.1

No, I belive the hardest one is op27 no2.

And the hardest piece at all... I really don't care.

[soliloquy]

Barlow Cogluotobusletismesi
Barrett Tract
Bussotti Pour Clavier
Cage Etudes Australes
Diaz-Infante Solus
Dillon The Books of Elements
Finnissy all.fall.down.
Finnissy Folklore
Finnissy History of Photography in Sound
Finnissy Solo Concerto No. 4
Flynn Trinity
Globokar Notes
Heyn "203"
Hoban When the Panting STARTS
Martino Pianississimo
Otte Das Buch der Klange
Phurrer Phasma
Rzewski The Road
Scelsi Action Music
Skalkottas 32 Piano Pieces
Sorabji Opus Archimagicum
Sorabji Sequentia Cyclica Super "Dies Irae" ex Missa pro Defunctis
Sorabji Symphonic Variations
Stockhausen Klavierstuck VI
Stockhausen Klavierstuck X
Xenakis Erikhthon
Xenakis Evryali
Xenakis Keqrops
Xenakis Sieben Klavierstucken
Xenakis Synaphai
Yim :[ten]dril
Zimmermann Wustenwanderung

[mephisto]

 - As fast as possible "prestissimamente aprés Alkan"

Case closed.

[jre58591]

Bjørn Restan - As fast as possible "prestissimamente aprés Alkan"

Case closed.

hahahaha

[soliloquy]

Bjørn Restan - As fast as possible "prestissimamente aprés Alkan"

Case closed.

Isn't YOUR name Bjørn Restan?

[jre58591]

Isn't YOUR name Bjørn Restan?

thats why i was laughing, heh.

[cygnusdei]

Does anyone have an opinion on which of the Chopin Nocturnes is the most difficult to play? I though it might be No.13 in C minor Op.48 No.1

I vote for Nocturne in C# minor, Op. posth. for interpretation and tonal control. But for technique Op. 48 no. 1 takes the cake.

[PaulNaud]

Liszt's Transcendental Etudes as well as the Paganini Etudes but in their EARLY EDITION (1837 and 1838)

[jre58591]

Barlow Cogluotobusletismesi
Barrett Tract
Bussotti Pour Clavier
Cage Etudes Australes
Diaz-Infante Solus
Dillon The Books of Elements
Finnissy all.fall.down.
Finnissy Folklore
Finnissy History of Photography in Sound
Finnissy Solo Concerto No. 4
Flynn Trinity
Globokar Notes
Heyn "203"
Hoban When the Panting STARTS
Martino Pianississimo
Otte Das Buch der Klange
Phurrer Phasma
Rzewski The Road
Scelsi Action Music
Skalkottas 32 Piano Pieces
Sorabji Opus Archimagicum
Sorabji Sequentia Cyclica Super "Dies Irae" ex Missa pro Defunctis
Sorabji Symphonic Variations
Stockhausen Klavierstuck VI
Stockhausen Klavierstuck X
Xenakis Erikhthon
Xenakis Evryali
Xenakis Keqrops
Xenakis Sieben Klavierstucken
Xenakis Synaphai
Yim :[ten]dril
Zimmermann Wustenwanderung

im curious. just how much of that stuff does ian pace play?

[opus10no2]

Jre and Skep, you could both learn alot from my post above.

You'd soon learn how irrelevant that list is, and furthermore, you'd learn that Pace is far from being the most endowed pianist out there.

[jre58591]

Jre and Skep, you could both learn alot from my post above.

You'd soon learn how irrelevant that list is, and furthermore, you'd learn that Pace is far from being the most endowed pianist out there.

oh i know all of that stuff you mentioned pretty well. however, i do have a soft spot for new complexity, etc, so i acknowledge it. i also acknowledge everything that you mentioned. and that isnt my list and i wasnt agreeing with it or anything, but anyone whose seen or heard those pieces can agree how difficult they are, technically.

[opus10no2]

And yet, would you not agree that to perform Chopin's winterwind etude at the marked tempo is of equal or greater mechanical difficulty to those pieces previously mentioned?

'New Complexity' is evidently the most demanding music to play accurately from a brain virtuoso perspective, but to compare technical ability, these pieces are irrelevant and far from ideal.

Brain virtuosity is like comparing piano playing to an obstacle course, with Finnissy and the gang's obstacle courses being the most complex and demanding to manouvre.

Finger/Mech-virtuosity is like comparing piano playing to the olympics, with different techniques(especially like those in the Chopin etudes) like different olympic events.


The former taxes the brain the most, and the latter taxes the technique and mechanism the most.

[jre58591]

you do have a point. however the day anyone takes comme seriously is the day hell freezes over.

[pita bread]

comme, when is u gonna compete in da LEEDZ?

[opus10no2]

you do have a point. however the day anyone takes comme seriously is the day hell freezes over.

I see. 

comme, when is u gonna compete in da LEEDZ?

2009 if I'm ready by then, if not - 2012

[•ÇØM]

the c major scale

ihatepop

the a minor scale definitely. Sounds and looks easy but the technique is beyond Opus Clavi.

-Chidi

[nicco]

Brain virtuosity is like comparing piano playing to an obstacle course, with Finnissy and the gang's obstacle courses being the most complex and demanding to manouvre.

Finger/Mech-virtuosity is like comparing piano playing to the olympics, with different techniques(especially like those in the Chopin etudes) like different olympic events.


The former taxes the brain the most, and the latter taxes the technique and mechanism the most.

I just cant understand how these two can be separated. They are so heavily connected, the fingers will not play a single note without the brain, they will not have any technique, strength, stamina etc. The socalled "fingermemory" is based in the brain, reflexes are based in the spine. With no brain there would be no technique to talk of, so you cant say that something demands more then the other. Playing fast and accurate are the fingers and brain working together, and the reason someone plays faster then others are methods of training and choice.

[ahinton]

I just cant understand how these two can be separated. They are so heavily connected, the fingers will not play a single note without the brain, they will not have any technique, strength, stamina etc. The socalled "fingermemory" is based in the brain, reflexes are based in the spine. With no brain there would be no technique to talk of, so you cant say that something demands more then the other. Playing fast and accurate are the fingers and brain working together, and the reason someone plays faster then others are methods of training and choice.

Aside from being plain standard common sense(!), this is entirely correct. I think, however, that I understand what "op10no2" writes, which is that, for example, much of the "new complexity" music requires additional "brain virtuosity" of a kind not required to anything like the same extent in other types of music, although this makes no material difference to what you are saying here. The major challenges to the brain that are unique to "new complexity" repertoire are those of figuring out how some of the more complex rhythmic notations actually sound in practice (the "inner ear" has first to process this) and, once the brain has sorted that out, getting it to send the appropriate messages to the fingers and other necessary parts of the musculature in order to translate it into piano playing. Apart from this issue, the only other aspect that is specific to "new complexity" music is the sheer amount of information processes and consequent message forwarding that are expected to occur within comparatively brief spaces of time - but then this is no different in principle to what Jonathan Powell says about the so-called "difficulty" of OC - it's the quantity or information and processing that is at issue, so one simply has to practise more things over longer periods of time than would pertain if one was learning, say, a Haydn sonata.

Best,

Alistair

[nicco]

Aside from being plain standard common sense(!), this is entirely correct. I think, however, that I understand what "op10no2" writes, which is that, for example, much of the "new complexity" music requires additional "brain virtuosity" of a kind not required to anything like the same extent in other types of music, although this makes no material difference to what you are saying here. The major challenges to the brain that are unique to "new complexity" repertoire are those of figuring out how some of the more complex rhythmic notations actually sound in practice (the "inner ear" has first to process this) and, once the brain has sorted that out, getting it to send the appropriate messages to the fingers and other necessary parts of the musculature in order to translate it into piano playing. Apart from this issue, the only other aspect that is specific to "new complexity" music is the sheer amount of information processes and consequent message forwarding that are expected to occur within comparatively brief spaces of time - but then this is no different in principle to what Jonathan Powell says about the so-called "difficulty" of OC - it's the quantity or information and processing that is at issue, so one simply has to practise more things over longer periods of time than would pertain if one was learning, say, a Haydn sonata.

Best,

Alistair

So then, the only real difference lies in amount of hours spent at the piano? Of course this is not a surprise, but it would seem that this is what it all boils down to. Its also the matter if IQ is a factor here, the more intelligent the person, the faster he will learn etc.

[pianowelsh]

Anyone who thinks modern/contemporary music is only complex in brain terms and not digitally has a very small experience of the genre..There are some phenominally difficult pieces to play in terms of finger technique and in particular chords and pianistic geography.

[ahinton]

So then, the only real difference lies in amount of hours spent at the piano? Of course this is not a surprise, but it would seem that this is what it all boils down to. Its also the matter if IQ is a factor here, the more intelligent the person, the faster he will learn etc.

Provided that has the means to develop the necessary potential in the first place, the answer is yes. I also agree with your remark re IQ up to a point, although one may suppose that any comprehensive appreciation of this factor ought not to ignore entirely the idiot savant factor, to the extent that certain people appear capable of "learning" certain things at a rate considerably faster than that of usual expectation based upon IQ alone.

Best,

Alistair

[ahinton]

Anyone who thinks modern/contemporary music is only complex in brain terms and not digitally has a very small experience of the genre..There are some phenominally difficult pieces to play in terms of finger technique and in particular chords and pianistic geography.

Indeed - you are of course correct to say this - but these factors of finger dexterity, chord shapes and keyboard geography are for the most part no different to those encountered in, say, the most challenging piano works of Alkan, Liszt and Godowsky except in matters of degree and frequency or event. The fact remains, however, that all the processes that the brain has to figure out have then to generate messages from it to the muscles that actually move in the appropriat ways to make the sounds at the keyboard, so the brain processes and physical follow-ups are, again, not only inextricably linked and unavoidably interdependent but also the same as they are in earlier music other than in terms of degree and frequency The reason I write this is that most "new complexity" piano music embraces very few playing disciplines that are entirely absent from earlier music, just as Godowsky's most intricate pianistic polyphonies are not so "different" in essence to those of Bach, Beethoven and Chopin except in matters of degree - he demanded that the pianist be capable of controlling more brain functions and physical movements in shorter spaces of time than did those earlier masters.

Best,

Alistair

[nicco]

Im curious Alistair, having never seen your scores, how you would describe your own music in terms of difficulty and "pianistic geography" You seem to have much knowledge about the subject, so I presume your compositions are very pianistic, no?

[ahinton]

Im curious Alistair, having never seen your scores, how you would describe your own music in terms of difficulty and "pianistic geography" You seem to have much knowledge about the subject, so I presume your compositions are very pianistic, no?

I am always wary of "describing" my music at all, actually! - but I appreciate your question and will try to answer it as best I can. I take it that your enquiry is specifically about my piano music and I would say of it that some is indeed quite difficult, though more of that difficulty is in the area of polyphonic balance than in matters more specific to keyboard geography problems. I suppose that the most difficult of my piano pieces are Sequentia Claviensis (1993-94), Piano Sonata No. 5 (1994-95) and Sieben Charakterstücke (1998-2003). As to the extent to which my piano writing may be considered in any sense "pianistic", I should say that I am not a pianist but my fascination with the piano as an expressive means nevertheless led me, years ago, to spend many hundreds of hours working my way at the piano through much of Alkan, Godowsky, Liszt, Medtner, Rakhmaninov and Busoni for the specific purpose of trying to figure out whatever I could about how it might have felt for those composers to play their own music and how their playing influenced the way in which they thought as composers for the piano; how much of that will have rubbed off in my own writing it is not for me to say, but I would not unnaturally like to think that all this preparatory exploration was not a complete waste of time! Beyond these remarks I can only suggest that you look at some examples to get your own perspective on how they strike you.

Best,

Alistair

[pianowelsh]

Id love to see some of your work actually alistair.. im always interested in new music and you strike me as someone who would bring many rich colours to their work. Where can we see you music..and do you have a specific publisher??  I have to say im particularly interested in miniatures...are your 7 character pieces of the short pithy variety??  Id be particularly interested to see those OR even hear a recording of you playing them in the audition room???

[ahinton]

Id love to see some of your work actually alistair.. im always interested in new music and you strike me as someone who would bring many rich colours to their work. Where can we see you music..and do you have a specific publisher??  I have to say im particularly interested in miniatures...are your 7 character pieces of the short pithy variety??  Id be particularly interested to see those OR even hear a recording of you playing them in the audition room???

Thanks for your enquiry. All of my scores and the CDs of my work are available from The Sorabji Archive; for details, please visit https://www.sorabji-archive.co.uk/hinton/biography.php and follow the links to Scores and Discography. Of the 7 pieces you mention, the last is almost 9 minutes an the others between 5 and 7 minutes each, so they're hardly "pithy"! I am not a pianist, by the way.

Best,

Alistair