What's the most difficult piano piece?

Question

I have intensive knowledge both in the classical and modern pop/rock/soundtrack repertoire but I would like to hear your opinions. From what I've read on other websites, many of the answers I saw were like fantaisie impromptu and moonlight sonata 3rd movement which is clearly not even near being the hardest ever. If you could please give a reason as to why you think it is the hardest piece(technical, musical expression, tone color etc..)

My List:
2. Rachmaninoff 3rd Piano Concerto - The performer must know how to build up MANY areas without reaching the piano's limit beforehand. Must maintain the dominant sound on one while playing extremely fast notes. Most importantly, it's not so easy to synch with the orchestra.
1. Gaspard De La Nuit - Scarbo - Easily the Hardest in my opinion. Ravel incorporates almost every difficult piano technique possible(simul staccato/legato, double and triple octave fast jumps crosshand-playing while playing single repeat notes and sometimes all of these are done at the same time) except for multi-elemental tasking such as scriabin etude op 42 no 5. Also the most difficult is adaptation to the dynamics or tone color, pp to ff in a second, ppp to fff in a second, etc...

The popular ones stated that I dont agree with:
moonlight sonata 3rd Movement- If you are a concert pianist, we don't even need to argue about this one. Simple patterns no big jumps, simply just fast, and the dynamics arent varying signifcantly.
Fantaisie Impromptu - yes 3 against 4 is difficult at first, but the hands remain relatively at the same place without change in major tempo or octaves.
Liszt Transcendentals- They are definitely harder than the above 2 however, it does not incorporate techniques so much as scarbo and rach.
Sorabji Opus Claviwhatever- I watched the score with the audio in many areas of this 4 hour piece and I can honestly say dissonance with a random progression has a limit then it just becomes cacophony. Sorabji's works were either unplayable (meaning not hard but impossible) or extremely dissonant to the ear in that many passages are introduced without resolve.
Chopin Etudes- Same reason as moonlight 3rd but they are a little harder.

Answer 1

I'd give a vote for Godowsky's fiendish reworkings of Chopin's Etudes.



I've read a quote similar to H. Schoenberg's on the Wikipedia page, but it was, "they are the most horrifying nightmares ever conceived for the instrument."



from Godowsky's web: http://www.godowsky.com/Compose/chopin_studies.html

from Wiki; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Studies_on_Chopin%27s_%C3%89tudes

an excerpt: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Chopin-Godowsky.JPG

Answer 2

This is another one of those questions that seems to crop up with monotonous regularity. Of course it is hard to define what constitutes "difficulty." They are all difficult to me - however, there are a few pieces that are usually mentioned as amongst the most difficult, either because of their length and the shear endurance required to play them or the fact that you have to have a huge span or double jointed fingers... The pieces most commonly quoted when discussing this subject are: Islamey - An Oriental Fantasy (Balakirev) Gaspard de la Nuit (Ravel) 52 Studies on Chopin Etudes (Godowsky) Opus Clavicembalisticum (Sorabji) Of course there are a number of works by Liszt that might be included in this list ranging from the Trancendental Etudes to Reminiscences of Don Juan. As has already been pointed out - the question is highly subjective.

Answer 3

It's difficult to say what is the "hardest" piece, but I've heard that Ravel claimed that "Gaspard de la nuit" was an attempt to write a piece more difficult than Balakirev's "Islamey", the standard "hardest piece" of the time. I'm not sure that he succeeded. And, of course you can just get in to stuff that you call "unplayable", either for harmonic, endurance, or notational reasons.



I'm not comfortable just voting for one, but "Islamey" may be one to consider.

Answer 4

I've heard that Scriabin's 5th sonata is among the hardest in the piano repertoire, mostly because of all the completely insane chord jumps you gotta do with individual hands.

Answer 5

I heard that some of Alkan's etudes are very difficult too. Hamelin liked to challenge the impossible and played many of Alkan's music.