Hypothesis : Chopin's Etudes are the 'hardest pieces' in the entire repertoire

[opus10no2]

This theorem is grounded in the *competitive repertoire* concept.

Now I would never argue against the reality that Sorabji and those who followed him composed music that reach the height of complexity and length. This music takes huge amounts of time to coordinate and memorize, and taxes any pianist's mental faculties to its utmost.

However..
In the real world, simply playing a piece without much legacy in the way of precedents in performing standards means that any performance of these works cannot be truly 'competitive'.
I qualify and apply the term 'competitive' due to the obvious nature of the endless 'hardest piece' debates; seeking a 'winner' of some sort.

EVERY legendary pianist of today and the past studied/recorded the Chopin Etudes, leaving a legacy of precedents and 'benchmarks' to compete against.

They may take mere days to learn, but they take decades to truly master and perform at the standard of the legends.

[retrouvailles]

Well, Mr. Turnbull, I would disagree with your statement, simply because legacy is not a factor in determining difficulty. Also, most pianists with a well-rounded pianistic education from a conservatory or good university should be able to negotiate the difficulties in the Chopin Etudes. I'm not saying that every pianist will be able to play all 24 flawlessly in one sitting, but they should be able to learn any small set  of the 24 in reasonable time. Why must they be at "the standard of the legends", whatever that means? We live in the year 2011, so why must we be solely subjected to what some long dead pianists did on some crackly recording 60 years ago? Pianists should want to aspire to set their own traditions, rather than just try to emulate what someone else did. If you try to just add to legacy, the weight of that will fall on your shoulders.

[opus10no2]

Answer me this one question -

Which is the more difficult(by difficult I mean that which fewest people could achieve even with the utmost effort) feat -

1.Performing the entire Opus Clavicembalisticum with score.

2.Performing Chopin's 'opus10no2' in under 45 seconds.

[carlnmtka]

... legacy is not a factor in determining difficulty. ... why must we be solely subjected to what some long dead pianists did on some crackly recording 60 years ago? Pianists should want to aspire to set their own traditions, ... . If you try to just add to legacy, the weight of that will fall on your shoulders.

First point is correct, the other two not so much. There is a standard (inc., etudes), greats like Cortot, Brailowsky and others set it during the Golden Age of the piano. The past is part and parcel of tradition -- "one's own tradition" doesn't make sense. Continuing the legacy of great pianism, of expressing a composer's genius is a challenge that any future-great should aspire.

[retrouvailles]

Answer me this one question -

Which is the more difficult(by difficult I mean that which fewest people could achieve even with the utmost effort) feat -

1.Performing the entire Opus Clavicembalisticum with score.

2.Performing Chopin's 'opus10no2' in under 45 seconds.

My question is why the hell would you want to do the second one? It doesn't do the piece any artistic justice to play it at such an unnecessarily breakneck speed. That said, I still think that the former is more possible and is more desirable to hear. I'd pay a lot more money to see the former than the latter, which is just a circus act in the end.

[opus10no2]

Funnily enough I feel more people would enjoy the breakneck Chopin in concert, it ends up sounding something like a souped up bumblebee alternative.

One man's circus act is another man's olympic gold medalist.

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[retrouvailles]

Whatever, Steven. Find a bit enough sample size, and anything is possible.

[fftransform]

1.Performing the entire Opus Clavicembalisticum with score.

2.Performing Chopin's 'opus10no2' in under 45 seconds.

Nobody plays that Chopin Etude at that tempo.  You might as well ask whether it's more difficult to play Evryali in 20 minutes or Winter Wind in 20 seconds.  Alternatively, and with equal arbitrality, I could ask if it is more difficult to perform the OC in two hours and twenty minutes, or Op. 10 No. 2 in 45 seconds; considering the average tempo the Chopin is taken at, that's about what it actually equates to.  And I think that nearly anybody who is knowledgeable enough of the pieces would say that to play the OC in that length of time is "less achievable" than playing the Chopin at such a tempo.

I do not think that your overall logic is sound, either.  I feel confident in saying that there exist far more recordings of Op. 10 No. 3 than Op. 10 No. 2 out there in the world.  It seems as if your principles would draw the conclusion that Op. 10 No. 3 is more difficult.  Otherwise you have to say, before the fact, that Op. 10 No. 2 is "more difficult" in the "normal sense," and therefore your idea cannot actually determine if a piece is more or less difficult than another, because it simply uses another methodology to do so.  It seems to me that all you're capable of saying is that the more commonly heard a work is, a strong performance of that work will "impress" more than a strong (or even stronger) performance of a more obscure work.  I completely disagree with this; there are too many variables that I believe will be much more important in that regard.  For instance, consider Carl Vine's Sonata No. 1; this is a fairly esoteric piece, and is only now starting to become somewhat popular, after it was performed in the Van Cliburn Competition a few years ago by Joyce Yang.  I would conjecture that the reaction to this piece was much stronger than the reaction to her more technically sound performance of Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsody No. 6, a very common piece that I'm sure most of the audience was familiar with, which took place directly afterward.  I think that uncommon repertoire can actually be more "competitive" in that sense; you have the chance to not only "impress" a lot of people with your performance, but with the music itself.  There certainly should be a distinction between the two aspects of listening to such a performance, but there very often isn't, for an average listener.

[opus10no2]

Whatever, Steven. Find a bit enough sample size, and anything is possible.

Still I think the best way to define difficulty is to ascertain the % of people who'd be capable of it.