Piano Concertos!

[jsen]

Could you please order these concerts by difficult, or at least group them by difficulty?

- Wolfgang A. MOZART – Concerto Nº20, D minor Kv 466
- Wolfgang A. MOZART - Concerto  Nº21 in C Major Kv 467
- Ludwig van BEETHOVEN - Concerto  Nº3 in C minor, op. 37
- Ludwig van BEETHOVEN - Concerto  Nº4 in G Major, Op.58
- Ludwig van BEETHOVEN - Concerto  Nº5 in E flat Major, Op.73
- Frédéric CHOPIN - Concerto  Nº 2 in F minor, Op.21
- Sergei PROKOFIEV - Concerto Nº 1 in D flat Major, Op. 10
- Sergei PROKOFIEV - Concerto  Nº 3 in C Major, Op.26
- Franz LISZT - Concerto  Nº 1 in E flat Major
- Sergei RACHMANINOV - Concerto Nº 1 in F sharp Minor, Op. 1
- Sergei RACHMANINOV - Concerto  Nº2 in C minor, Op.18
- Maurice RAVEL - Piano Concerto in G Major
- Robert SCHUMANN - Concerto in A minor, Op. 54
- Edvard GRIEG, Concerto in A minor, op. 16

Thank you!

[classicalnhiphop]

Easiest to Hardest:
Mozart 20 (one of my favorites)
Mozart 21
Beethoven 5
Beethoven 3
Ravel (guessing on the difficulty, don't know much about it)
Grieg
Schumann
Beethoven 4
Chopin 2
Liszt 1
Prokofiev 1
Rachmaninoff 2
Rachmaninoff 1
Prokofiev 3 (ALOT harder than the others)

[cometear]

Easiest to Hardest:
Mozart 20 (one of my favorites)
Mozart 21
Beethoven 5
Beethoven 3
Ravel (guessing on the difficulty, don't know much about it)
Grieg
Schumann
Beethoven 4
Chopin 2
Liszt 1
Prokofiev 1
Rachmaninoff 2
Rachmaninoff 1
Prokofiev 3 (ALOT harder than the others)

I would rank the Beethoven 5 as much harder than that. I think it is the hardest of his piano concerti.

[classicalnhiphop]

It's really not too difficult, just very long.  To me, there is no question that the fourth is the hardest of his

[cometear]

Possibly but 3 harder than 5? I think 5 is harder than 3 by a lot.

[nanabush]

I wouldn't necessarily put Prokofiev's 3rd as another dimension than the other Concerti - Rach 2 is still VERY difficult... I don't know much about the difficulty of the Mozart Concerti so I'll leave them out of this.

Prokofiev uses a different language than the others, and if you don't play much of him, this piece will probably own you.  I guess with that in mind, the Rachmaninoff concerti would come a bit easier to me (I play lots of Rach, barely any Prokofiev).

Also, the Ravel probably has the most difficult orchestral part of all of these concerti...so I could see that being pretty nightmarish to rehearse.  Movement 3 is completely bonkers, listen to the clarinet/flute at the opening o.O, and later on the bassoon is just crazy.  Those aside, the piano part is intense, and similar to the Prokofiev, uses a pretty strange language for the piano part.  Just look at the opening in the first movement of the Ravel, or the cadenza later on, and just about all of the third movement.  I'll have to say that it definitely isn't as demanding/tiring as an entire Rachmaninoff concerto, but surely it's got more knots than the Grieg.

[classicalnhiphop]

i guess, but to me it seems rach 1 is harder than rach 2 for some reason

[ale_ius]

Easy-the shorter ones with less notes and standard rhythms. Hard -the longer ones with more notes and tricky rhythms.

 

-Alee Marie.

[thesixthsensemusic]

I'd say the Mozart ones are the least cumbersome. Lots of difficult acrobatic fingerwork in there but they also tend to lack big jumps as they were written for a 5,5-octave instrument.

The Beethoven ones are, from hard to hardest, ranked 4, 3, 5. Schumann's one seems manageable looking at the first movement but, like a scorpion, the venom is in the tail (the finale). Apparently it's supposed to be quite comparable to the Grieg in terms of technical difficulty. My piano teacher actually recommended Beethoven 4 to one of my co-students, as a nice entry into piano concerti for those proficient in playing more difficult solo repertoire.

Chopin is more difficult then all of the above and same goes for the Liszt. There's a list of common classical and romantic concerti rated in 4 difficulty levels, ranked by Isidor Phillipp, which came as the cover page of his Haydn piano concerto transcription for piano solo. You can find it here:

https://imslp.org/wiki/Special:ImagefromIndex/175588

I'm pretty sure the Rachmaninoff and Prokofiev ones are among the hardest concerti in the standard repertoire, but it's not something I could say anything meaningful about regarding their difficulty relative to one another, as I've never even dared to try playing through them.