Piano Forum

If you only played the piano for a year, I'd put off playing Brahms' sonatas and Rachmaninoff.  They are too difficult even for people with large hands.  I also have small hands, believe it or not.  And I also used to complain about having small hands until I saw one of my classmate, a Chinese girl, with the smallest hands I had ever seen.  She could only reach a 7th from her thumb and the pinky.  So she had to play octaves with her 4th finger.  But the pieces that she played were big!  She played the Bach-Busoni Chaconne, Schumann's Fantasy stucke, and so on.  And since then I have stopped complaining about my small hands.  My hands were bigger than hers.

Anyway, small hands are not a problem.  There are many ways of getting around technical difficulties with small hands.  Believe me, you can play big pieces with small hands.  John Nakamatsu, one of the previous winners of the Van Cliburn competition has one of the tiniest hands of professional pianists and he played the Rachmaninoff 3rd concerto at the final round.

As for the rep, you should build up your technique before you attempt anything too difficult to handle at your present level.  But with proper practicing and technical training, you can play difficult pieces with small hands.  I can now.