Hard piano music : what is the hardest [to play]

[james]

I have just got a SACD player [from KM] and I am buying some SACD's

I have just bought Freddy Kempf [Mussorsky/Pictures, Ravel/Gaspard, Balakirev/Islamey]

The interesting thing about the CD notes is that it claims that Islamey was the hardest piano
piece up to [say] 1900 and Ravel wanted Gaspard/Scarbo to be even harder.

I would have thought that stuff by Sorabji, Messiaen, Xenakis or Finnessy would be even
harder nowadays.

By the way -- I learned a new word from reading the CD-notes .. ossia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ossia

which means the composer [him or her self] writes in an option that allows the pianist to play a simpler version.

james

[Jared]

^^ great question James, but one I fear that only a selection of pianists would be able to answer for you (I shall wait patiently for Simon to see this thread!). I remember seeing an interview with Stephen Hough, where he said the Tchaikovsky PC No 3 was one of the hardest pieces he's had to perform, whilst others of course have gone for the Rach PC No 3, because you need extended fingers!

[Diapason]

Leaving aside the standard caveat that different players find different things hard, I think Godowsky's Studies on Chopin's Etudes would have to be up there. As a mere mortal I find the originals scary enough! His Passacaglia is also meant to be very difficult. Horowitz called it unplayable, according to Wikipedia.

[Diapason]

That Horowitz comment is described elsewhere as silly. Certainly the Passacaglia doesn't seem as hard as the Chopin paraphrases.

[Ciaran]

Yes, some of the Godowsky/Chopin paraphrases essentially involve playing two Chopin Études at once! Given that the Chopin Études are considerd to be very difficult, playing two at once can't be easy. Of course Marc-André Hamelin has written an Étude which combines three of the Chopin Études and plays it here:



Alkan (Grande Sonate 'Les quatre âges', Douze études dans tous les tons mineurs, Op. 39) and Busoni (Fantasia Contrappuntistica) wrote some extremely difficult piano music as well.

Some of Liszt is extremely difficult, for example the Douze Grandes Études (Twelve Great Studies) S. 137 published in 1837, the earlier, more technically demanding version of the still-alarming Transcendental Etudes S. 139 published in 1852. And some of Beethoven's piano sonatas are not for the faint-hearted!

[Diapason]

And some of Beethoven's piano sonatas are not for the faint-hearted!

When I was a youngster I could never understand those kinds of comments, nor similar about Mozart or Bach. Now that I'm old and decrepit (!) I absolutely do. I remember talking to a piano teacher about it, and he basically said that a lot of the Liszt stuff I assumed was REALLY hard was reasonably straightforward once you got beyond a certain level, whereas some of the Beethovens were always hard to play.