Hardest tonal piece with few notes?

[sevencircles]

What is the hardest "good" and mostly  tonal piece with only a few notes?

Hamelin´s triple etude based on Chopin gets my vote.

[quasimodo]

What is the hardest "good" and mostly  tonal piece with only a few notes?

Hamelin´s triple etude based on Chopin gets my vote.

What do you call "with only a few notes" ? Hamelin's triple etude has, hem, a bunch of notes IMHO.

[sevencircles]

What do you call "with only a few notes" ? Hamelin's triple etude has, hem, a bunch of notes IMHO.

Few compared to OC  and many other works

Short piece would be a better decription perhaps

[Etude]

Techically, I think Barlow's Cogluotobusisletmesi goes through some tonal spots.

But it has just a bit more than a few notes.

[dnephi]

On that subject, A Beethoven Adagio or a Bach Fugue.

[opus10no2]

An enlightened debate over these 'most difficult' questions would be impossible without the practical realisation of precisely what IS difficult about the learning and execution of a piece of piano music.

2 primary areas -

Co-ordination and memorisation of note sequences
Something is more difficult if it is more complex and longer in this regard.

The other is actual execution by the mechanism - the realm of mechanique.
If perfect accuracy is assumed, then speed of mechanism is the primary difficulty in this area.

[mephisto]

Shouldn't playing the hardest piece be considered the most difficult achivement possible on the piano? If person x can play the msot difficult piece in the world then one should assume that this person have done the most difficult thing possible on the piano. Sadly this is not the case. It is pointless to disscuss what is the most difficult piece on the piano. Isn't more interesting from a purely pianistic perspective to try to find out what is the most impressive pianistic feat one can do?

"Playing" a piece doesn't reveal anything about you. Just think of the Chopin etudes for instance. What do we learn about Gavrilov after hearing him play the Chopin etudes? And what do we learn about Rusnak after hearing him play the same pieces?

Well that Gavrilov has a world-class technic and that Rusnak doesn't. "Playing" a piece doesn't tell anything about your technic, it is how you do it that matters.

Another example is the Opus Clavicembalisticum.  Often regarded as one of the most difficult pieces in the repertoire. Madge has played this piece. So one would just assume he has one of the greatest technics ever to "play" such a difficult piece. But this is also wrong. Because when one listens to Powell play this piece, one realises that while Madge may have "played" the piece there are technical flaws EVERYWHERE. Still Madge can say that he has "played" the piece. But Powell's achivement is FAR greater, even though they have played the same piece. One could assume that if two people play the same piece they have done the exact same achivement, but this is NOT the case.

[pianogeek_cz]

Plus, I'll ALWAYS pick Gavrilov's rendition of Prokofiev 8th sonata over pretty much any Opus Clavinovabasiliscum rec 

Seriously...

I think if we accept Hamelin's triple etude as having a few notes, this thread loops back to the forever-repeated What's the world's hardest... etc. Let's talk about pieces which aren't as harsh to the ink cartridges.

So... my vote goes for Bach's (late?) stuff. Sure, you could argue that technically speaking, Bach is not -that- demanding, compared to Liszt etc., but (a) more white than black, which pretty much rules the harder Liszt & co. stuff out, and (b), who said anything about "technically speaking"? I think that once inkblot-scores are disqualified from competition, the difficulty that remains stops being physical and starts inching towards musical imagination. And with Bach... we all know you have to concentrate sometimes on as much as five melodies simultaneously, independently and as a whole at the same time, constantly checking each one of them by ear (SUCH a bugger with long notes in weak dynamics), etc., etc. And let's not forget the work you have to do before even touching the piano (assuming that you're working with Urtext or decide to disregard the editor's input to Bach's manuscript) - think the whole friggin' thing through, both individual voices and all together, articulation, dynamics, etc. I would actually go for Bach as hardest overall to master and perform convincingly. Maybe, big maybe, Shosty comes close in the interpretative difficulties, but in a wholly different aspect (how do you laugh =at= the audience?). Mozart, too, is very hard as regards clarity and being colorful and convincing with a comparatively small amount of notes to do it on.

Long rant. Go practice. 

[jabbz]

I personally think to make the first movement of Beethoven's Moonlight sonata anything but dull and over played is remarkable. Really, it's so overdone, and done so terribly. Other than that, yeah, Bach is a killer.

[opus10no2]

Shouldn't playing the hardest piece be considered the most difficult achivement possible on the piano? If person x can play the msot difficult piece in the world then one should assume that this person have done the most difficult thing possible on the piano. Sadly this is not the case. It is pointless to disscuss what is the most difficult piece on the piano. Isn't more interesting from a purely pianistic perspective to try to find out what is the most impressive pianistic feat one can do?

"Playing" a piece doesn't reveal anything about you. Just think of the Chopin etudes for instance. What do we learn about Gavrilov after hearing him play the Chopin etudes? And what do we learn about Rusnak after hearing him play the same pieces?

Well that Gavrilov has a world-class technic and that Rusnak doesn't. "Playing" a piece doesn't tell anything about your technic, it is how you do it that matters.

Another example is the Opus Clavicembalisticum.  Often regarded as one of the most difficult pieces in the repertoire. Madge has played this piece. So one would just assume he has one of the greatest technics ever to "play" such a difficult piece. But this is also wrong. Because when one listens to Powell play this piece, one realises that while Madge may have "played" the piece there are technical flaws EVERYWHERE. Still Madge can say that he has "played" the piece. But Powell's achivement is FAR greater, even though they have played the same piece. One could assume that if two people play the same piece they have done the exact same achivement, but this is NOT the case.

True.

It's not just what you play, it's more how you play it.

[rob47]

Re: Hardest tonal piece with  few notes?

its got to be a fugue i dont know which or by who but true fugues

[ramseytheii]

What is the hardest "good" and mostly  tonal piece with only a few notes?

Hamelin´s triple etude based on Chopin gets my vote.

I think the theme to Beethoven's Diabelli Variations - read the Rosen analysis of it.

Walter Ramsey