Most demanding piece according to famous pianists

[sevencircles]

Sometimes you wonder what piece the pianostars consider the hardest they ever learned and how much time they actually spent learning it.

Do you know any public statements by famous pianists regarding this?

I know that Hamelin talked about it a few years ago but I don´t remember what piece he considered the hardest.

[pianisten1989]

Horowitz said the c-major scale

[sevencircles]

Horowitz said the c-major scale

Haha, really 

I assume that he played the c-major scale in octaves all the time 

[pianisten1989]

Well, try to play a c-major scale perfectly even, in a fast tempo!

[djealnla]

Deleted

[gyzzzmo]

and can 'c-major scale' be considered as a piece?

[pianist1976]

A few I remember:

Brendel wrote that Busoni's Toccata was the most difficult piece he ever played.

Horowitz always talked about Chopin Op 10 no 2 as been almost "unplayable" (and also said that the enormous effort to learn it wasn't worthy). He also spoke about Liszt's Feux Follets as one of the most difficult pieces but, as opposite to Op 10 no 2, he played it when he was younger (as I know, unfortunately there's no recording).

Gieseking considered both Ravel's Alborada del Gracioso and Scarbo as "extremelly difficult".

[djealnla]

Horowitz always talked about Chopin Op 10 no 2 as been almost "unplayable" (and also said that the enormous effort to learn it wasn't worthy).

I thought Horowitz considered Op. 10 No. 1 to be the hardest Chopin Etude.

Here is Hamelin's take on this issue:

https://www.pianostreet.com/smf/index.php?topic=27744.msg320571#msg320571

[john11inc]

Not pictured:
Clarence Barlow- Cogluotobusisletmesi
Richard Barrett- Tract
Michael Finnissy- all.fall.down.
Vinko Globokar- Notes

[ahinton]

At the risk of appearing pedantic in respect of the latter part of the thread title, might you care to enlighten us as to which famous pianists have described any of the admittedly challenging works that you cit above as "the most demanding piece"? (although I suppose that this title in any case presumes the question as to what might constitute "famous" in this context in the first place)...

Best,

Alistair

[john11inc]

Hodges, Pace, Damerini, Nonken, Nicolls, Ullen, Knoop, Finnissy.

[djealnla]

Hodges, Pace, Damerini, Nonken, Nicolls, Ullen, Knoop, Finnissy.

In that very order? And no Sorabji?   

[ahinton]

Hodges, Pace, Damerini, Nonken, Nicolls, Ullen, Knoop, Finnissy.

There is indeed som spledid playing to be had amongst this list, although most do tend to play mainly contemporary music rather than a wider repertoire including contemporary music - but are they as generally "famous" as some others? They are, of course, all widely respected by those who listen to the kind of repertoire in which they specialise (and with good reason), but I'm sure that you know what I mean about comparative "fame". I note that you omit Powell (who happens to have studied with the same teacher as Hodges)...

Of the pieces that you cite, the Downie is perhaps different to the others in terms of the nature of "demand"; I don't happen to have a score by me at present but, if I remember correctly, the pianist is only ever required to execute one note at a time in each hand, so the principal "demand" here is, I think, the mental one of just reading the score and ensuring that each of those notes in enunciated in precisely the correct place and at the required dynamic, the the overall balance between mental and physical demands here is very much in favour of the mental. And, challenging though it certain is, is Trinity really on quite the same "demand" level as the other examples?

Best,

Alistair

[ahinton]

In that very order? And no Sorabji?   

Apart from Ogdon and Hamelin (and there are but few examples from them), Sorabji is mainly performed by pianists who ought to be famous but are far less so than they would appear to deserve; even of the list of eight above, only one plays Sorabji...

Best,

Alistair

[pianisten1989]

and can 'c-major scale' be considered as a piece?

If these modern pieces can be considered as pieces, I would say that  The Grand C-major scale is far better!

[ahinton]

If these modern pieces can be considered as pieces, I would say that  The Grand C-major scale is far better!

The value of the above statement speaks eloquently for itself. Pity, that, especially when another member here has gone to considerable trouble to post what he has...

Best,

Alistair

[omar_roy]

I must confess that I have no ear for the above contemporary pieces, either.

Correct me if I am wrong, but it seems to me that those pieces place a greater emphasis on timing rather than the sounds themselves.

[thalbergmad]

I must confess that I have no ear for the above contemporary pieces, either.

Having no ears is a distinct advantage with such "music".

Thal

[ahinton]

I must confess that I have no ear for the above contemporary pieces, either.

Correct me if I am wrong, but it seems to me that those pieces place a greater emphasis on timing rather than the sounds themselves.

It's not so much a question of anyone needing to "correct" you or of your necessarily being "wrong" per se in any ways that can be set down in stone and be beyond all argument as that it is less than clear what you might mean by this statement. "Timing", in the context of these or any other musical works, can only relate to that of the sound iterations, the individual events and so on and is accordingly not divorceable from "the sounds themselves"; the same naturally applies whether we're discussing Bussotti or Busoni, Martino or Martucci, Hoban or Holmboe, Furrer or Fauré.

Whether or to what extent any of those pieces register with you intellectually and/or emotionally is another matter altogether - and obviously a personal one.

Best,

Alistair

[ahinton]

Having no ears is a distinct advantage with such "music".

It is hard to imagine how "having no ears" can be any kind of advantage, let alone a "distinct" one -  for a human being in any context.

Best,

Alistair

[omar_roy]

It's not so much a question of anyone needing to "correct" you or of your necessarily being "wrong" per se in any ways that can be set down in stone and be beyond all argument as that it is less than clear what you might mean by this statement. "Timing", in the context of these or any other musical works, can only relate to that of the sound iterations, the individual events and so on and is accordingly not divorceable from "the sounds themselves"; the same naturally applies whether we're discussing Bussotti or Busoni, Martino or Martucci, Hoban or Holmboe, Furrer or Fauré.

Whether or to what extent any of those pieces register with you intellectually and/or emotionally is another matter altogether - and obviously a personal one.

Best,

Alistair

I guess what I was getting at was that the pitches themselves seemed to be of little consequence, but rather executing them rhythmically/dynamically properly was of greater importance.

I'm not quite sure how to approach this music, being so inexperienced in it.  I cannot say that I like it, because I don't.  I would like to at least be able to understand it in some way.

I'm hoping it will be the same with this contemporary music.  Maybe I just need the right introduction to it.  It's hard for me to listen to this music with a clean palette, having been brought up listening to very "pretty" sounding music.  I have a very well ingrained notion that "music" should sound "pretty" and have pleasing melodic lines and so on and so forth. 

Are there any composers or pieces you would suggest that I look at as sort of a "Contemporary Music For Dummies" starting point?

[ahinton]

I guess what I was getting at was that the pitches themselves seemed to be of little consequence, but rather executing them rhythmically/dynamically properly was of greater importance.

Well, if that was indeed what you meant, I have to say that I find such a notion incomprehensible since, as I wrote before, you can't separate the dynamic or timing instance from the notes that are presented; do you believe - or even perhaps suspect - that some composers write on occasion in such a way that they are caring fr more for the one aspect than the other? If so, that notion is a foreign one to me as a composer.

I'm not quite sure how to approach this music, being so inexperienced in it.  I cannot say that I like it, because I don't.  I would like to at least be able to understand it in some way.

The first thing to say is don't worry about it - just listen and accept (or indeed reject) what you hear on its own terms rather than trying to relate it to something else with which you may be more familiar; I know that this is what to do, because I can recall my first experiences of Mozart piano concertos in my mid-'teens at a time when I knew almost nothing before Mahler and I found them as puzzling as you appear to find certain contemporary music and, when you write of your "inexperience", you hit the nail on the head, for anything which is outside previous personal experience is bound to seem strange at first hearing and sometimes at quite a few subsequent ones, too. Don't worry too much about "understanding" it in the first instance; Busoni said to Sorabji in 1919 that music must be heard - he didn't say "understood". Of course an intellectual understanding of all kinds of music can contribute to one's appreciation of it, but it should never be held up as a kind of essential without which the listener should expect to get little or nothing.

I'm hoping it will be the same with this contemporary music.  Maybe I just need the right introduction to it.  It's hard for me to listen to this music with a clean palette, having been brought up listening to very "pretty" sounding music.  I have a very well ingrained notion that "music" should sound "pretty" and have pleasing melodic lines and so on and so forth.  

Ah - a "clean palette"! Robert Simpson, the English composer, once expressed his reservations about the degree of importance that deserves to be placed upon what we now speak of as "HIP" (Historically Informed Performance) practices, by observing that the listener can no longer listen to the music of Bach as Bach's listeners would have heard it for the first time because our ears are accustomed to Xenakis; without wishing to undermine HIP practices in their own right and rightful place, these are wise words that appear to brook no argument.

Are there any composers or pieces you would suggest that I look at as sort of a "Contemporary Music For Dummies" starting point?

No; I wouldn't be so patronising! Someone recently expressed reservations about the notion of "children's opera" and I responded by expanding them to embrace the idea of "children's music" of any kind, illustrating my point by referring to someone whose response to a person who had told him that Shostakovich has written music for children had been that, having then listened to Shostakovich's Fourth Symphony at the age of eight, he concluded that Shostakovich had indeed written music that this particular child. Any music that might grab the listener by the scruff of his/her ears will do so at almost any age if it's going to do so.

Best,

Alistair

[thalbergmad]

Alistairtair

How many bottles today??

[omar_roy]

Alistair,

Once again the breadth and detail of your response is much appreciated.

[john11inc]

Oh, I wasn't really interested in valuing the music on an aesthetic basis.  Obviously, most people aren't interested in it.  Those just happen to be the most technically difficult pieces I'm aware of, with some other examples from those, particular composers also topping the list.  George Flynn's Trinity might not be quite as difficult as some of the others, as Alistair pointed out, and the work by Downie is also very specific in its difficulty; there is a thread about that piece elsewhere on the forum, and anyone interested in seeing why it's a bit of an oddball in terms of establishing a "difficulty" can look it up.  And, I don't speak to Powell (not saying that as in, "I refuse to speak to Jonathan Powell for some reason"; just saying that I've only talked to him briefly, once or twice), so I don't know what his opinion is.

I'm not really too familiar with what X, Y, Z pianist has said is the most difficult work, so I can't really answer the precise question posed by the thread.  I can only answer what I happen to know/believe (I don't really think there's much subjectivity to the question of technical difficulty, although there are always idiots people who want to chime in about how a Mozart Sonata is so difficult because they believe a performance of it subjectively requires some tangential, such-and-such criterion).  Discounting the works above presents a slippery slope: for instance, I might want to mention the difficulty in Bartok's Concerto No. 2 or Ginastera's Concerto No. 1, but someone who has an even more narrow taste might claim those are too challenging, and then we get relegated into the Romantic Era etc. etc. until we're not really answering the question any more.  As far as pieces in the standard repertoire (or near-standard), Barber's Sonata, Scriabin's Sonatas Nos. 7 and 8 and Vers la Flamme, Ginastera's Concerto No. 1, Bartok's Concerto No. 2, Prokofiev's Concerto No. 2 and Toccata, Rachmaninov's Sonata No. 1, Brahms' Concerto No. 2, Rzewski's North American Ballad No. 4, Ravel's Gaspard de la Nuit, Stravinsky's Trois Mouvements de Petrouchka, Corigliano's Etude Fantasy, the Tchaikovsky-Pletnev Nutcracker Suite and Liszt's Etudes and Don Juan Fantasy are probably the most technically challenging.  But even then, there is plenty of more obscure, Romantic repertoire that is infinitely more difficult: works by Reger, Henselt, Liszt, Busoni, Godowsky, Alkan and Mereaux, among others, which surely includes composers nobody here is even familiar with.

I mean, I think the aim of the actual question, if I'm not mistaken (and let me know if I am), is to find out what the most difficult pieces in the standard repertoire are, from extremely qualified sources ("famous pianists").  I think the list above is a long, albeit entirely accurate one; it might be missing a piece or two that slipped my mind (Hammerklavier, Rach 3, Prok Concerto 5 and Sonata 6/7, and Brahms' Variations did not slip my mind, just to be clear; they're simply not quite as difficult, IMO).  I think there was a thread made (even by me, if I'm not mistaken) several years ago on here regarding the most difficult pieces in the standard repertoire.  Got a lot of people talking; you'll probably get more information from that than from a couple blurbs about what a certain pianist, whose repertoire is only so large, considers the hardest piece s/he's actually *played*.

[ahinton]

How many bottles today??

Don't ask me how that came about! All I can tell you is that bottles don't enter into it - not even those kind in which one might find a genie if lucky!

Best,

A

[djealnla]

Someone recently expressed reservations about the notion of "children's opera" and I responded by expanding them to embrace the idea of "children's music" of any kind, illustrating my point by referring to someone whose response to a person who had told him that Shostakovich has written music for children had been that, having then listened to Shostakovich's Fourth Symphony at the age of eight, he concluded that Shostakovich had indeed written music that this particular child.

Hm, this sentence doesn't seem to make sense.

[ahinton]

Hm, this sentence doesn't seem to make sense.

Very simply, the ideas that opera specifically intended for children might be an entirely unnecessary genre and that much the same might be said of any music specifically intended for children have been expressed, the reason being that many intelligent and receptive children are capable of responding to any music rather than needing to confine themselves to music written with children in mind; the Shostakovich illustration (which I repeat and is not mine) merely proves that point, in that a certain 8 year old child was profoundly affected by that composer's Fourth Symphony, which is anything but a "children's" piece.

Best,

Alistair

[ahinton]

There's good sense aplenty in post #24 above (which I won't quote here for reasons of space saving).

I, too, suspect that the motive implicit in the question was to encourage responses about "standard repertoire" pieces (horresco referens!) and the "famous pianists" who play them, rather than to invite replies that might embrace unlimited solo piano repertoire including the (relatively) contemporary examples posted above - a fact that might appear to reveal the severely limited value of such questioning, since what might constitute - or be thought to constitute - "standard repertoire" changes all the time and will vary from one observer to another; after all, the repertoire of the piano is exapanding all the time and the fame of pianists likewise changes as time moves on.

If indeed my suspicions as to the motive behind this question are indeed correct (and correct ME if I'm wrong about that), the question - or at least what is implicit therein - appears to be sadly flawed. The entire concept of "standard repertoire" needs to be thrown unceremoniously out of the window.

Best,

Alistair

[gep]

The entire concept of "standard repertoire" needs to be thrown unceremoniously out of the window.

And the further the better, too!
The term "standard repertoire" begs the questions of what defines "standard" and who sets it.
In my experience, there's tons of splendid art to be found outside the "standard", and quite a bit of boring drizzle within it.

gep

[djealnla]

Very simply, the ideas that opera specifically intended for children might be an entirely unnecessary genre and that much the same might be said of any music specifically intended for children have been expressed, the reason being that many intelligent and receptive children are capable of responding to any music rather than needing to confine themselves to music written with children in mind; the Shostakovich illustration (which I repeat and is not mine) merely proves that point, in that a certain 8 year old child was profoundly affected by that composer's Fourth Symphony, which is anything but a "children's" piece.

Best,

Alistair

I'll emphasize the senseless portion of the text:

Someone recently expressed reservations about the notion of "children's opera" and I responded by expanding them to embrace the idea of "children's music" of any kind, illustrating my point by referring to someone whose response to a person who had told him that Shostakovich has written music for children had been that, having then listened to Shostakovich's Fourth Symphony at the age of eight, he concluded that Shostakovich had indeed written music that this particular child.

[thalbergmad]

The pianist Oleg Marshev said the Schytte Piano Concerto was the hardest he had ever played and he had performed all the Rach/Prok/Medtner/Tchaikovsky and gawd knows what else.

Thal

[ahinton]

I'll emphasize the senseless portion of the text:

I'm sorry if I sound dense, but I still fail to get what it is that you don't understand about that sentence. The person concerned was told that Shostakovich has written some music for children. He evidently ignored this and listened instead to the composer's Fourth Symphony, one of the composer's most challenging, powerful and elaborate works - and he responded to it; as he was only 8 years old at the time, he felt that he did not need Shostakovich to have written music especially for children, since that symphony still made a massive impression upon him at that tender age. Does it make sense how?

Best,

Alistair

[djealnla]

I'm sorry if I sound dense, but I still fail to get what it is that you don't understand about that sentence. The person concerned was told that Shostakovich has written some music for children. He evidently ignored this and listened instead to the composer's Fourth Symphony, one of the composer's most challenging, powerful and elaborate works - and he responded to it; as he was only 8 years old at the time, he felt that he did not need Shostakovich to have written music especially for children, since that symphony still made a massive impression upon him at that tender age. Does it make sense how?

Best,

Alistair

The sentence sounds as if it's unfinished. This what you wrote:

Someone recently expressed reservations about the notion of "children's opera" and I responded by expanding them to embrace the idea of "children's music" of any kind, illustrating my point by referring to someone whose response to a person who had told him that Shostakovich has written music for children had been that, having then listened to Shostakovich's Fourth Symphony at the age of eight, he concluded that Shostakovich had indeed written music that this particular child.

This is what I would write:

Someone recently expressed reservations about the notion of "children's opera" and I responded by expanding them to embrace the idea of "children's music" of any kind, illustrating my point by referring to someone whose response to a person who had told him that Shostakovich has written music for children had been that, having then listened to Shostakovich's Fourth Symphony at the age of eight, he concluded that Shostakovich had indeed written music that this particular child could enjoy/grasp.

[presto agitato]

Beethoven's "Hammerklavier" is the most difficult piano work ever. Leslie Howard told me that.

I remember reading an interview with Hemelin and he said that Scriabin sonatas were the most difficult piano works ever.

[sevencircles]

Beethoven's "Hammerklavier" is the most difficult piano work ever. Leslie Howard told me that.

Pollini played both a Hammerklavier and Boulez 2 sonata during some recitals in the early eighties.

Too bad his technique has declined so much since then.

[ahinton]

Quote from: ahinton on December 31, 2010, 05:23:17 PM
Does it make sense how?

The sentence sounds as if it's unfinished.

It does, but it was not meant to; it includes a mistyping - "how" should have read "now". Sorry about that.

In the other sentence, "that this particular child" should have read "for this particular child"! Again, apologies!

Best,

Alistair

[djealnla]

It does, but it was not meant to; it includes a mistyping - "how" should have read "now". Sorry about that.

I wasn't actually confused by this, since my brain automatically corrected it. 

[ch101]

I thought Horowitz considered Op. 10 No. 1 to be the hardest Chopin Etude.

Here is Hamelin's take on this issue:

https://www.pianostreet.com/smf/index.php?topic=27744.msg320571#msg320571

he did. and pollini beat him to it.