Rodrigo Ventura ([log in to unmask]) wrote:

>Hi.  What do you think is the most difficult piano piece ever composed?
>My vote: Ravel's Scarbo, from Gaspard de la Nuit

These competitions always fall down on one basic question: how do you
define "difficult"?

Many musicians will tell you how difficult Mozart is to play, yet I hardly
think you'd expect, say, the Piano Concerto K488 to be a contender.

If you're simply talking technique, as 'twere, then I don't think Ravel
is going to be the winner.  While I'm no pianist, it strikes me that works
like Alkan's Concerto and his Grande Sonate, whose second movement, quasi
Faust, includes an 8 voice fugue; Godowsky's Passacaglia, which Horowitz
reportedly practised for a year before giving up in disgust, claiming you
needed three hands (or was it thre epairs of hands) to play it, or his
studies on the Chopin etudes, several of which arrange a two-hand etude
for a single hand (Ravel studied the left hand studies while writing his
LH concerto), several other combine two etudes in the same key, and his
version of the "Minute" waltz, which culminates by counterpointing the
main waltz with the central section; Balakirev's Islamey is a fair old
knuckle-buster too.

Then when you get into the 20th century, you encounter music which surely
is physically impossible for 10 fingers to play: Sorabji is possibly the
main culprit here, his monumental works - like the Opus Clavicembalisticum,
which lasts well over 4 hours, or the Symphonic Variations, which would
probably last over 7 hours if anyone had ever performed them - frequently
sprawl onto three, four or more staves (I think the end of OC has 6).

The question is interesting, but eventually unanswerable.

Deryk Barker
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