The most difficult Piano Sonata

[shubertimproviz]

I just thought this question after hearing Liszt's Sonata in b-minor. But, which is the most difficult sonata composed for piano?

[rachmaninoff_forever]

But, which is the most difficult sonata composed for piano?

There is no "most difficult sonata composed for piano", so I imagine that everyone's gong to give you a lecture about how everything is subjective or something.  But ANYWAYS, here are a couple really hard ones.

Rachmaninoff sonata 1 (I heard the reason why it's so underplayed is because it's so difficult.  I think it's quite a bit harder than his 2nd)
Bartok sonata like (my teacher said like Rachmaninoff sonata on steroids)
Scriabin sonata 5 (Richter said it was the most difficult piece he ever played)
Scriabin sonata 7
Beethoven Hammerklavier
Sorajbi sonata

[49410enrique]

difficult how? technially? interpretation? performance (i.e. endurance, etc)? to listen to lol ? for audiences to understand?

as such
you'll prolly get a list that will be all over the place and there will be much discord and disagreement about it (as with many/almost any post on the repertoire that asks for the the MOST this or the LEAST that....),

 off the top of my head one of the pieces i think should be grouped w the list would be the Charles Ives Piano Sonata No 2 "Concord Mass"

incredible but scary piece ('scary' for me from a 'performance' perspective, not in 'mood' or anything like that). i can think of a few others but i'm late for class. will update chime in later if someone doesn't beat me to the punch on some other honerable mentions

[ahinton]

Here we go, yet again; another "hardest" thread!

The only credible answer (for what it's worth) that's almost certanly unamenable to challenge in Sorabji's fifth one, Opus Archimagicum.

Best

Alistair

[asuhayda]

Hi!

There's soooo many that are extremely difficult.  But I will give this a try...

1. Prokofiev Sonata No. 8
2. Beethoven's Hammerklavier (Op. 106 No.29)
3. Rachmaninoff Sonata No.2 in Bb minor
4. Scriabin Sonata No.5

Just my opinion...

[j_menz]

Here we go, yet again; another "hardest" thread!

The only credible answer (for what it's worth) that's almost certanly unamenable to challenge in Sorabji's fifth one, Opus Archimagicum.

Best

Alistair

I'm not sure that "more trouble than it's worth" is the same as "most difficult". Still, until someone actually performs/records it, we'll never know if that's the case.

[philb]

Nancarrow Sonatina (Count?)
Scriabin's 8th
Concord Sonata
Blah Blah Blah...

And how about the Sciarrino sonatas which are almost unplayable.

[philb]

I'm not sure that "more trouble than it's worth" is the same as "most difficult". Still, until someone actually performs/records it, we'll never know if that's the case.

Wasn't there a website not too long ago that was dedicated to recording OA. I wonder what happened to them.

[fftransform]

I'm not sure that "more trouble than it's worth" is the same as "most difficult". Still, until someone actually performs/records it, we'll never know if that's the case.

That "argument" is non-sensical.  Want me to write a page of hyper-unplayable drivel which is unequivocally more difficult than anything that's been performed and slap the title "Sonata" on it?

And how about the Sciarrino sonatas which are almost unplayable.

No. 3 is, for all intents and purposes, impossible at the marked tempi.  But the other four don't really rank among the super-difficult modern/contemporary works.  4 and 5 are actually pretty playable; No. 1 is stupidly hard in places, but nothing like No. 3.  No. 2 is also not bad, because all of the leaping around is very repetitive.  De la Nuit is harder than any of the Sonatas, other than No. 3.  

As far as pieces that actually have the word "Sonata" in the title, Opus Archimagicum is the hardest that I can think of, too.  But besides being a silly thread for the obvious reasons, it seems even more silly to pigeonhole ourselves to "things called a Sonata."  That term has basically had no meaning since the turn of the 20th century, which is of course when all of the most difficult music was written.  Specifically regarding Sorabji, the two works of his which I personally consider the most difficult have been performed by Powell, now (Solo Concerto and the Super "Dies Irae" w/e variations, whose title is too silly for me to ever remember).  But of course the most difficult pieces overall have come out of the New Complexity school.  Wieland Hoban's "when the panting STARTS" is definitely the most difficult piece I have ever come across by a long way.  Downie, Barrett and Finnissy wrote some quite ridiculous works, and the piano part in Emsley's "The Juniper Tree" is ultra-difficult.  Not from the New Complexity school, but Xenakis and Bussotti have also written some totally-unplayable-but-still-plausibly-attemptable pieces.  There are a slew of others maybe a half-step down in difficult from those, but I won't unleash a laundry list.

[ahinton]

No. 3 is, for all intents and purposes, impossible at the marked tempi.  But the other four don't really rank among the super-difficult modern/contemporary works.  4 and 5 are actually pretty playable; No. 1 is stupidly hard in places, but nothing like No. 3.  No. 2 is also not bad, because all of the leaping around is very repetitive.  De la Nuit is harder than any of the Sonatas, other than No. 3.

I'd agree with this. What you've posted is Damerini, n'est-ce pas? How do you think that Hodges' performance compares?

As far as pieces that actually have the word "Sonata" in the title, Opus Archimagicum is the hardest that I can think of, too.  But besides being a silly thread for the obvious reasons, it seems even more silly to pigeonhole ourselves to "things called a Sonata."  That term has basically had no meaning since the turn of the 20th century, which is of course when all of the most difficult music was written.

I wouldn't say that it has "no meaning", since there are plenty of works with that tile written since around 1900 that are recognisable as "sonatas" on the basis of what we understand that term to have meant from, say, Haydn to Brahms, but I do of course agree that its use has inevitably become much looser than it was before then - and Sciarrino's examples illustrate this fact as well as any. Sorabji's last sonata (known as his fifth but actually his sixth, as there's an unnumbered one from 1917 which is his first known extant piano work) breaks the bounds of convention in terms of its sheer scale and it's interesting that he abandoned the term thereafter and all his subsequent large-scale piano works ae either called symponies or something else.

Specifically regarding Sorabji, the two works of his which I personally consider the most difficult have been performed by Powell, now (Solo Concerto and the Super "Dies Irae" w/e variations, whose title is too silly for me to ever remember).

It's not silly; it's just long (like the piece itself). For the record, it's Sequentia Cyclica super Dies Iræ ex Missa pro Defunctis in clavicembali usum - i.e. cyclic sequence on the Dies Iræ from the mass for the dead, written for piano - but of course it's usually known simply as Sequentia Cyclica.

But of course the most difficult pieces overall have come out of the New Complexity school.  Wieland Hoban's "when the panting STARTS" is definitely the most difficult piece I have ever come across by a long way.  Downie, Barrett and Finnissy wrote some quite ridiculous works, and the piano part in Emsley's "The Juniper Tree" is ultra-difficult.  Not from the New Complexity school, but Xenakis and Bussotti have also written some totally-unplayable-but-still-plausibly-attemptable pieces.  There are a slew of others maybe a half-step down in difficult from those, but I won't unleash a laundry list.

This is true up to a point, but only, I think, in that there are quite different difficulties in these works; I can still imagine pianists (albeit not that many!) who can develop their facilities sufficiently to present decent performances of Tract, Downie's Piano Pieces, Finnissy's all.fall.down / Piano Concerto No. 4 / EC-T, Evryali or whatever who'd still struggle to cope with Sorabji's Piano Sonata No. 5, Sequentia Cyclica, Piano Symphony No. "0" or Symphoic Variations, partly (though not entirely) because of the sheer resources of stamina required for these monumental works. All of those others are very short by comparison, but I suspect that even Finnissy's A History of Photography in Sound which, exceptionally, is of Sorabjian dimensions would not present quite such challenges to the pianist as do any of the Sorabji works that I mention here.

By the way, the works of Sylvano B remain an utterly closed book to me; no doubt that's down to my own density, but so be it, I fear!...

Best,

Alistair

[fftransform]

I'd agree with this. What you've posted is Damerini, n'est-ce pas? How do you think that Hodges' performance compares?

Haven't listened to it in a long time, but I know when I chose the Damerini, I had compared it to a couple of others, so at least back then I preferred Damerini.  He has a very light touch, possibly even uses the French technique, which I think is suited to this piece.

This is true up to a point, but only, I think, in that there are quite different difficulties in these works; I can still imagine pianists (albeit not that many!) who can develop their facilities sufficiently to present decent performances of Tract, Downie's Piano Pieces, Finnissy's all.fall.down / Piano Concerto No. 4 / EC-T, Evryali or whatever who'd still struggle to cope with Sorabji's Piano Sonata No. 5, Sequentia Cyclica, Piano Symphony No. "0" or Symphoic Variations, partly (though not entirely) because of the sheer resources of stamina required for these monumental works. All of those others are very short by comparison, but I suspect that even Finnissy's A History of Photography in Sound which, exceptionally, is of Sorabjian dimensions would not present quite such challenges to the pianist as do any of the Sorabji works that I mention here.

Yes, the enormity of a work certainly has to count for something, but I don't usually put much stock in it in my own personal evaluations.  Otherwise, we might have to say that the Moonlight Sonata is harder then Prokofiev's Toccata, for example.  It'll probably really come down to what the definition of "play" here is.  I think that by default the Sorabji works are more "possible" than some of those others, but might be "harder" in the sense of the sheer amount of work required to get them up to performance standards.  The performance standard for pieces like all.fall.down. or Synaphai are - necessarily - not super-rigorous.  It's a tricky topic that I don't really want to go deeply into.

By the way, the works of Sylvano B remain an utterly closed book to me; no doubt that's down to my own density, but so be it, I fear!...

That is a real shame.

[ahinton]

That is a real shame.

Re Bussotti - well, that's as maybe, but I'm sure that it's my fault rather than his -and it can't be helped, I guess. Thanks for your other points, by the way, which make sense.

Best,

Alistair

[cstotlar]

I have a student composing a sonata in F## Minor.  It's written for a pianist with twelve fingers
and virtually impossible to play.  It will probably be not all that good, maybe, but everyone will want
to own a copy and flash it around.

Curtis Stotlar

[ahinton]

I have a student composing a sonata in F## Minor.  It's written for a pianist with twelve fingers
and virtually impossible to play.  It will probably be not all that good, maybe, but everyone will want
to own a copy and flash it around.

Well, aren't you (and your student) the lucky ones! All that you've done here (and perhaps deliberately) is demonstrate that this thread, for all that it has generated some interesting comments, is on a Haydn to nothing...

Best,

Alistair

[davidjosepha]

I have a student composing a sonata in F## Minor.  It's written for a pianist with twelve fingers
and virtually impossible to play.  It will probably be not all that good, maybe, but everyone will want
to own a copy and flash it around.

Curtis Stotlar

Why, uh, would you want to write a piece for someone with 12 fingers? Just to prove you can? I would say it's the epitome of the ridiculousness of 20th century experimental music, but, of course, there have been even more ridiculous things.

[ahinton]

Why, uh, would you want to write a piece for someone with 12 fingers? Just to prove you can? I would say it's the epitome of the ridiculousness of 20th century experimental music, but, of course, there have been even more ridiculous things.

I don't somehow think that he means this to be taken absolutely literally...

But why "The most difficult Piano Sonata" I have no idea; why "piano sonata" rather than "piano work"? And, in any case, we've surely had our fill and more of this tiresome and unanswerable "hardest piece" stuff over the years here, haven't we? And, for what (if anything) it may or may not be worth (given the fact that I am not a pianist:

The hardest piece is Für Elise
The easiest's OC;
It does not please that both of these
Are far too hard for me.

[Anon. 2012]


Best,

Alistair

[scherzo123]

Hammerklavier Piano Sonata by Beethoven is pretty hard.