# Difficulty ranking of 3 piano concertos please



## dannwebb

How would you rate the following piano concertos, difficulty-wise?:

Prokofiev 2nd
Rach 3rd
Brahms 2nd

I know it's subjective, ultimately, but there must be some general consensus.


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## Il_Penseroso

Among all the piano concerti which I know: 

Ravel, Concerto in D for the left hand 
Liszt, first concerto in E flat 
Henselt, Concerto in f minor 

(the next would be Liapunov's second concerto if counted on four)


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## moody

Il_Penseroso said:


> Among all the piano concerti which I know:
> 
> Ravel, Concerto in D for the left hand
> Liszt, first concerto in E flat
> Henselt, Concerto in f minor
> (the next would be Liapunov's second concerto if counted on four)


How about answering the question?

There is no point in this but----Prokofiev, Rach and Brahms. But I'm no pianist and therefore ignorant and uninformed.


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## Jeremy Marchant

Personally, no idea, but this forum has...
http://www.magle.dk/music-forums/1680-piano-concerto-difficulty-rankings.html
Scroll down to the 24 Jan 11 posting (note the list is in ascending order of difficulty, so the Mozart concerti are deemed the hardest (quite right too!))
To save others the trouble of looking this up, the answers given by this poster are:
_Rachmaninov 3 (easiest)
Brahms 2
Prokofiev 2_

Incidentally, I found this in approx two minutes by googling "difficulty ranking piano concertos"


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## Couchie

For "general consensus", the Rach 3 has definitely entered the public mythos as being the most difficult in the standard repertoire, there is a hollywood movie about it after all. There are a lot large chords in quick succession and requires a lot of endurance, especially in its famous, climatic cadenza. I've fooled around with the score and some of it almost seems written to be difficult on purpose. 

The Prok 2 has its own torrentially difficult cadenza in an otherwise straightforward first movement, the second movement is very fast and requires relentlessness dexterity for its duration, and the fourth has very large leaps of the hands in quick succession which makes it very difficult to be accurate.

Brahms 2 I can't comment on.


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## moody

Jeremy Marchant said:


> Personally, no idea, but this forum has...
> http://www.magle.dk/music-forums/1680-piano-concerto-difficulty-rankings.html
> Scroll down to the 24 Jan 11 posting (note the list is in ascending order of difficulty, so the Mozart concerti are deemed the hardest (quite right too!))
> To save others the trouble of looking this up, the answers given by this poster are:
> _Rachmaninov 3 (easiest)
> Brahms 2
> Prokofiev 2_
> 
> Incidentally, I found this in approx two minutes by googling "difficulty ranking piano concertos"


What you refer to is a sister forum to this one with the same owner. The opinion is by a member, somebody just like us.
I then found an article by the pianist Pierre Arnaud Dablemont "The 5 most Difficult Piano concertos".
His 5 were
;
1. Prokofiev 2.
2. Rach. 3
3. Bartok 2.
4. Brahms 2
5. R.Strauss "Burleske".

Wikipedia says that Rach.3 is famous for its technical and musical demands...it has the reputation of being one of the most technically challenging piano concertos in the repertoire.

John Sarkis : "Rach No.3 is one of the most challenging compositions ever written for the piano. The work is infamous amongst great pianists as a technical monstrosity".

Prokofiev No.2 . Prokofiev's biographer David Nice said in 2011 that Argerich wouldn't touch it, Kissin delayed learning it and Prokofiev, a virtuoso himself, got into a terrible mess trying to perform it on two occasions.

You will notice that pianists who play these concertos are " specialists" like Earl Wild, Jorge Bolet, Shura Cherkassky ,etc.
I don't know of many Mozart specialists playing these composers.
But just listen to recordings and they are horrendously difficult.


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## dannwebb

Jeremy Marchant said:


> ... Incidentally, I found this in approx two minutes by googling "difficulty ranking piano concertos"


Yes. Thank you for that. I did too. It showed me some opinions from those people. I asked *here* because I was interested in what people *here* thought.



moody said:


> There is no point in this ....


Indeed.

However, people do often ask pointless questions. Someone asked me for my opinion, I gave it, and was curious about what others would think.


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## moody

dannwebb said:


> Yes. Thank you for that. I did too. It showed me some opinions from those people. I asked *here* because I was interested in what people *here* thought.
> 
> Indeed.
> 
> However, people do often ask pointless questions. Someone asked me for my opinion, I gave it, and was curious about what others would think.


Well.how about some comment on the fact that I made the effort.twice, to answer you query ??


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## dannwebb

moody said:


> Well.how about some comment on the fact that I made the effort.twice, to answer you query ??


Oh. Is that the protocol? Sorry ... thank you very much for taking the time to respond.

And thank you to everybody else as well. Very informative.


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## Il_Penseroso

moody said:


> How about answering the question?
> 
> There is no point in this but----Prokofiev, Rach and Brahms. But I'm no pianist and therefore ignorant and uninformed.


Oooops... Sorry and thanks for correcting me. I taught of the 3 most difficult concerti ever written!

Ok:

Rachmaninov 3rd: Technically very haunting! 
Prokofiev 2nd: I don't know and can't comment on. 
Brahms 2nd: Needs a great sensivity, the work is written not only for a virtuoso but a man with a great understanding of timber and texture in musical writing, so I think it's more difficult than Rachmaninov.


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## Barelytenor

Yundi Li does a bang-up good job of the Prokofiev 2 with the Hong Kong Philharmonic and Edo de Waart on Youtube. It takes a while for the percussive second theme of the first movement to show up around 3:30, then things really take off after that.


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