I personally find jazz much harder to play well...and I've dabbled in both classical and jazz. With jazz you have to be able to compose on the spot and play what you have composed at that instant. You have to have ideas in order to improvise well. You have to have a thorough grasp of harmony and be able to plunk down complicated chords (like altered 13th chords) instantly. You have to be able to transpose on the fly. And you have to have some pretty fast fingers for all those runs and rapid-fire solos.
With classical, on the other hand, the music is all written out for you. You don't need to know anything about harmony and you certainly don't need any ideas. As Bach said, all you have to do is press the right key at the right time and the instrument plays itself. That's why I turned to classical after several years of trying to learn jazz piano.
Completly ridiculous post. Ho yeah you can TRY playing classical pieces with no knowledge of harmony and with no ideas. In Bach's time, music was viewed in a much more practical way than today. Music had to be composed regularly and be played well with minimal practice, and for most of his (even if they are genius works) works, it CAN work this way. But to be a real classical pianist you need to understand and grasp the very essence of the most subtle harmonic nuances, you need inspiration(ideas) to make works come to life, and if you don't think so, or do not see the difference between a midi player and Richter playing, then there's something very important and basic that is lacking in your musical intelligence. In jazz there are no true mistakes since anyways you're making things up on the spot. Classical requires perfection in every aspect, physically as well as mentally or spiritually or whatever you can come up with.
Topic: Classical vs. jazz what is harder