Piano Piece Suggestion Needed

[sydney_h]

I'm in the process of preparing for music auditions for several different colleges and am in need of a piece from the Romantic era. It must be as difficult or more difficult than Rhapsody in G minor, op. 72, no. 2 by Brahms. I want something that will be challenging enough to be impressive, but not impossible to perfect. Suggest away!

[classicalnhiphop]

Difficult Liszt Etudes: Transcendental etudes 4,5,8,10,12, La campanella, original versions of other etudes are also very hard
Rachmaninoff Etudes are usually challenging
Chopin Ballades, etudes, scherzi, some polonaises
Islamey, prolly the hardest out of all these along with Liszt TE 5
lots of hard and cool stuff in Romantic time period

[thorn]

Challenging does not equal impressive.

People tend to go particularly overboard with Romantic music in these auditions- if they've heard one performance of the Liszt Sonata, the Chopin-Godowsky Etudes, Islamey, they've heard a hundred. They would rather hear a confident, well prepared, musical performance of, say, the Liszt Transcendental nr 3 than a "just about there but could fall apart at any moment" performance of Transcendental 4 or 5.

Think about your strengths and the kind of styles from that era you can cope with. I assume you can play the Brahms 72/2 seeing as you name it as a benchmark. What's wrong with playing that in your auditions?

[sydney_h]

Thanks for all of the suggestions! Very helpful and much appreciated!

@thorn: The Brahms piece was actually suggested by one university that I'm auditioning at as their benchmark. I have been working on it, so I would just play that, but I don't feel that the college would appreciate me coming in and playing the piece they have established as their guideline. That is why I'm on the search for something else!

Also, as I have been in the process of learning it, I'm discovering that Brahms may not exactly be my style. I just began working on Schubert's Impromptu Op. 90, No. 2 in E flat major. It is more my style and is coming together quite nicely thus far, so I'm hoping it can work for my auditions.