Hardest piece you know?

Originally Posted by gms5287

Barber Piano concerto

UGH! those parallel 6ths...
and John Browning actually ASKED Barber to put those in!!!!!
he must have had a maschoistic streak a mile wide!

The rest of the concerto is, surprisingly, quite playable. A few stretches here and there, and some difficult rythmic passsges, but it fits well into the hand (Barber was an excellent pianist himself).

I think, other than those 6ths in the 1st movement of the concerto, the Piano Sonata is actually, overall, more difficult to play.

Brian flipping Ferneyhough.

Check out his scores sometime - they are absolute murder.

How about Liszt's Scherzo and March in B minor for piano, or the Transcendental studies (especially Feux Follets and Mazeppa)?

Or Sorabji's Opus Clavicembalisticum?

They are the hardest piano pieces I've heard of.

For chamber music, I'd have to say the holy grail of hard is usually Stravinsky. Soldier's Tale and the Septet are both ridiculous and require a very talented group to put together well. My faculty performing ensemble did Soldier's tale very well, but completely botched the septet when they attempted it.

Technically hard string pieces:
1) Ravel - Tzigane: I wouldn't call this the "hardest" piece, but this is one of the harder pieces of college/early professional repertoire. Just playing it isn't that hard, but playing it well is a different story (and I wouldn't call Joshua Bell's recording well-done).
2) Ernst - Last Rose of Summer variations. Many of the variations involve the violin harmonizing itself along with many instances of combined pizz/arco. The Hilary Hahn recording of it is fairly good. Come to think of it, most of Ernst's music is ridiculous.
3) Walton - Viola Concerto. It's not performed as often as the Bartok or the Hindemith, and for modern repetoire, I think it's a fairly difficult piece for the instrument.
4) Gershwin - Preludes for violin.

Hard Chamber pieces:
1) Stravinsky - entire catalog. I don't think this man believed in writing music that wasn't insane. Rite of Spring stands out as a doozie (I just saw the Boulez DVD of this <3 ), though Petroushka is harder than people give it credit for.
2) Messian - End of the World quartet. Ridiculous.
3) Chausson - Concerto for Piano, Violin, and String Quartet. It may not be the most technically challenging, but for such a small orchestration, it's so large-scale that the sheer profoundness implied can be quite difficult.
4) Mahler - any symphony. Huge orchestrations, technically very challenging, polyrhythmic, and musically sometimes very difficult to grasp.

Hardest pieces I've played:
1) Butterworth - Suite for Viola and Cello - I haven't played with a good cellist since high school, but I remember these being extremely rhythmically involved, especially since they were inspired by folk dances.
2) Hindemith - Viola Sonata no. 4
3) Bartok - Violin Rhapsody no. 2
4) Elgar - Cello Concerto (as played on Viola)

I know several pianists who have played the Grieg a minor and haven't really found it difficult. Musically, I find it hard, only because it's hard to bear that long of an unbroken streak of 4-measure phrases.

Matt's general point is a really good one: technical difficulty really is sometimes the least of your worries. There's interpretative, understanding, emotional, and coherence issues with a lot of pieces.

Balakirev - Islamey. Im sure its been mentioned at least once in this thread...but 'sif im gonna read it. This would have to be the hardest piece I've seen...but like everything else on this 'Hardest Piece List', I cant compare because I have not seen the scores.

The more modern music, such as Schoenberg, Webern, and this other guy who's name surpases me, is difficult because you can't play most of their music expecting to find a beautiful melody. Its all a patience game, taking the random sequence of notes and playing them in a succession which makes it look like you know what you are doing.

Other than that, my post seems rather useless. But yes, i will stick with Balakirev's music.

Originally Posted by goodridge_winners

The more modern music, such as Schoenberg, Webern, and this other guy who's name surpases me, is difficult because you can't play most of their music expecting to find a beautiful melody. Its all a patience game, taking the random sequence of notes and playing them in a succession which makes it look like you know what you are doing.

Schönberg and Webern would probably have thwapped you on the head with a heavy stick if they had to listen to you playing their pieces!

Stockhausen's pieces for piano, 10 in particular. I know someone mentioned this, but I must stress that this is probably the single most incredibly obscene thing I've ever seen in terms of difficulty. It's a 20+ minute long "miss a note and you're fucked" cluster glissandi and ridiculous dynamic fest. Looking at the score for it is just wow, and shouldn't be missed.

Most serialist music is almost impossible to play 100%, since if even one note is wrong the entire piece is wrong, since each tone is as important as the next. Really stressing on performers, and one of the reasons people began experimenting with electronic music in the first place. Real people couldn't play this stuff good enough, no matter who it was.

Most serialist music is almost impossible to play 100%, since if even one note is wrong the entire piece is wrong, since each tone is as important as the next.

And yet, unless you're following with a score or have it memorized, or are 99% of all listeners, NOBODY WILL NOTICE IF YOU MAKE A MISTAKE.

Originally Posted by Nicola Canzano

And yet, unless you're following with a score or have it memorized, or are 99% of all listeners, NOBODY WILL NOTICE IF YOU MAKE A MISTAKE.

Tsk tsk...