Piano Forum

Hi Pianist 21.

Well, since nobody else has replied...

I haven't spent time exploring the Henle website so I don't know about their difficulty ratings. I can only rate the difficulty of Un Sospiro in relation to some of Liszt's other etudes. I'd say it's easier than La Leggierezza and Gnomenreigen, but harder than Waldesrauschen. And, I'd say it's easier than any of the Paganini Etudes and easier than most of the Transcendental Etudes.

Your post indicates that you understand the subjectivity of difficulty ratings. I don't know if you're studying with a teacher or not. Either way, I'd gently encourage you to not pay too much attention to such things. If you're good enough to take on Un Sospiro, ratings don't really matter. They can be useful for keeping a student in lower or intermediate grades from music that's still way too difficult for them to bash their heads against, or from music that might damage their hands. Beyond that point though, such difficulty ratings seem to have little point than to allow a student pianist "bragging rights" - "I'm working on a piece that's rated 8!" (that sort of thing). To use one of the favourite (yep, Canada) rhetorical devices (paralepsis) of a current US Presidential candidate, "I'm not saying that's how you're using difficulty ratings, but some people do use them that way."

Having said all of the above, you should know that although I'm an experienced and reasonably capable musician, I'm only a fair pianist. With a few hours practice to revive them, I could "bash" my way through Un Sospiro or La Leggierezza, but they would be laden with more wrong notes than Schnabel or Cortot on their worst days (and would be without their brilliant interpretive insights). What's important though is finding out how the music works - how it feels from the inside. If you work on it for a week and get nowhere, probably best to back off and pick something else. But never let somebody's difficulty rating keep you from trying a piece if it's something you're really curious about.

best wishes and happy sighing!

jeff ok