i tried both, but only learned one successfully(la campanella). That could be because I really didn't like transcedental etude no. 10, but liked la campanella a lot. I'd say they are roughly equal technically demanding, so go for the one you like better. If I HAD to pick one that is more technically challenging, I'd go with transcedental etude 10 since it has more awkward spots than campanella.

It Depends on how fast you would like to play TE 10. The left hand is rather excruciating in some spots.

Thanks for everyone's input.  My preference is La Campanella.  I don't mind it being too popular as I am not playing the piano for exam or competition purposes.

I was slightly surprised that the consensus is that TE10 is harder.  I suppose one hears La Campanella being talked about a lot more with its famous jumps and trills; maybe that makes one perceive it to be a bit more difficult than it actually is.

I've started dabbling with La Campanella again and am having fun with it.  I think it's a good exercise to force one to release tension in the arms.  Let's see if I can persuade my teacher to teach this piece.

WHATT??? HOW IS LA CAMPANELLA BETTER THAN TE10???

Sorry, TE10 is one of my favorite Liszt etudes.

And yes I agree it's more difficult than La Campanella because it's more awkward. Though I hear if you can nail that first... thingy... with the 1st inversion chords... with both hands on top of each other (help me out, what do I call it?) then you can pretty much nail the rest of the piece. But that's what I heard, and besides, they weren't 100% serious. But they were serious that that's the hardest part.

TE10 is a bit harder, IMO.

Very insightful indeed. Care to explain certain technical problems you've encountered? Or do you feel your one line of text is a sufficient answer?

The ending sounds impressive, and the bonus is those chords at the last couple of pages are a lot easier than they really are (I'd say they are probably the easiest part of the piece).  Do you agree?

I think the jumps that La Campanella is most famous for are the easiest.  Especially the first and third pages.

But I guess on it's own the last few chords aren't that hard.  But by the time you get there you're already burnt out, so they're so much harder.



But ANYWAYS, this guy is probably gonna blast through the first three pages in a shorter amount of time it actually takes to play it.  The real problems start once you get to the trills.  The 16th note octaves aren't that difficult on its own.  But like I said before, the trills are difficult and they'll burn you out so when you get to the 16th note octaves, they'll be much harder IMO.

I've started dabbling with La Campanella again and am having fun with it.  I think it's a good exercise to force one to release tension in the arms.  Let's see if I can persuade my teacher to teach this piece.

The short answer, Transcendental Etude No10 is more demanding. Why not learn both?

I created a blog post to answer this question

http://www.empowernetwork.com/successwithdan/liszt-transcendental-etude-10-vs-la-campanella/

It's what I experienced with both pieces. I list the challenges I faced with each piece.

To get best results learning La Campanella with a teacher, learn and memorize the whole piece at a slow tempo. I struggled big time with one of the passages in La Campanella and I almost gave up learning it because of that one part.

Enjoy the read and look forward to hearing you play both pieces. Why not start a project thread?

I'm going to go against the grain and say that La Campanella is more difficult.  I have some reasons too!

I'm currently working on the F minor, about a month in a half in (prepping it for my lessons in September).  I've never exclusively worked on la Campanella, but I've played around with the piece and am aware of what's going on in it technically.

I'm not saying either of the pieces are easy, but I've found the 'harder' parts of La Campanella more difficult than the 'harder' parts of the F minor.

The left hand in the F minor isn't as bad as it's made out to be... it has similar passagework to the middle section of the Liebestraum, and if you are acquainted with broken alternate technique (instead of 5-4-2-1 doing 5-2-4-1), then a lot of the left hand in the faster bits should be intuitive.  There are never any disgusting leaps EXCEPT the stuff that comes up around measure 14 (the groups of triplets going up by octaves for the right hand), and that is pretty on par with some of the leaping stuff in La Campanella. 

The Stretta (which I haven't spent too much time on yet) has typical octaves you'd see in Liszt...la Campanella also does, and I can say that I'd rather have the option of legato fingering octaves in this one than the leaps at the end of La Campanella.

Aside from these, a major reason why this piece (to me) seems more straightforward and generally less difficult is because of the large amount of RECURRING passagework.  La Campanella throws a ton of different variations at the player, while this one keeps the same techniques but in different keys (there are obviously a few exceptions).

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Now, la Campanella has a load of material that I can't understand someone saying it's 'easier' than the F minor. 

-4-5 trills (or 3-4, 3-5 if you have large hands)
-the fast passage with the repeated notes (the 2nd interlude in B major)... that whole part is a monster.  That requires so much finger independence, accuracy, and dexterity in order to execute that passage and make it sound nice!  There aren't any areas with rapid repeated notes (except one set of Db octaves) in the F minor.
-the awkwardness of this piece for me trumps the awkwardness of the F minor.

... the one thing I'll give the F minor in terms of difficulty is getting a good sound, because it has tons of textures, stepwise chord movement, and some strange dissonances and harmonic shifts... so it clearly has musical difficulties, but I think these are easier to access than those in La Campanella simply because the F minor has less material to wrap your fingers around.