# What's classical music is the most difficult to perform/appreciate ?



## peeyaj (Nov 17, 2010)

What kind of classical music or piece that is the most difficult to perform given the technical capabilities of a performer? It can be a solo, chamber or orchestral piece. I heard a lot of modern music that is very very hard o perform..

Consequently, what piece of classical music that is the most difficult (for you) to appreciate?


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

I think Sorabji's massive hours-long piano solo works take the cake for most taxing on performers.

Sample:
http://www.sorabji-archive.co.uk/samples/sorabji-KSS50_p1_pub_01.png

This is the first page of a work that lasts over 4 hours.

Difficult for me to appreciate personally? Well, there are plenty of things I just don't enjoy, but among works written by composers whose other works I appreciate, I find Pierre Boulez's Piano Sonata No. 2 to be extremely dense and forbidding.


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## Neo Romanza (May 7, 2013)

I can imagine some Ligeti or even Wolfgang Rihm being incredibly difficult to perform well.


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## arpeggio (Oct 4, 2012)

*I've got rhythm*

As an amateur bassoonist and my experiences are limited. The are three orchestral works and two band work that were terribly difficult for me to play.

Brahms _Symphony #3._ I have played several of Brahms orchestral works and the _Third_ was the hardest.
Berlioz _Symphonie fantastique_. The bassoon part in the last two movements is next to impossible.
Stravinsky _Rite of Spring_. All those shifting meters.
Frank Ticheli _Postcards_. The shifting meters are worst than the _Rite_.
Alfred Reed _Armenian Dances-Part 2_. Very nasty rhythms in the second movement.

For the Brahms, Stravinsky, Reed and Ticheli the problems were the rhythms.


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## arpeggio (Oct 4, 2012)

*Bassoon Madness*

I just remembered that there are two solo bassoon pieces that I have that I am unable to play:

Gordon Jacob: _Partita for Solo Bassoon_
Vincent Persichetti: _Parable for Solo Bassoon_


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## peeyaj (Nov 17, 2010)

Neo Romanza said:


> I can imagine some Ligeti or even Wolfgang Rihm being incredibly difficult to perform well.


Is Rihm a well known composer among classical music enthuasiasts? I never heard of him.


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## peeyaj (Nov 17, 2010)

Mahlerian said:


> I think Sorabji's massive hours-long piano solo works take the cake for most taxing on performers.
> 
> Difficult for me to appreciate personally? Well, there are plenty of things I just don't enjoy, but among works written by composers whose other works I appreciate, I find Pierre Boulez's Piano Sonata No. 2 to be extremely dense and forbidding.


Horror of Horrors!


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## Crudblud (Dec 29, 2011)

peeyaj said:


> Is Rihm a well known composer among classical music enthuasiasts? I never heard of him.


He's quite well regarded among contemporary composers, but I'm not surprised you don't know him.


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

peeyaj said:


> Horror of Horrors!


After forcing myself through even 20-30 minutes of Sorabji, the Boulez Sonata sounds wonderfully focused and concise...still requires an ungodly amount of concentration to follow, though...


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## Neo Romanza (May 7, 2013)

peeyaj said:


> Is Rihm a well known composer among classical music enthuasiasts? I never heard of him.


Only to those into modern music but I'm sure there's plenty of listeners who have heard his name at least once. Whether they've heard any of his music, I obviously couldn't answer that.


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## Couchie (Dec 9, 2010)

Surely what Sorabji asks of pianists is nothing compared to the sheer masochistic perseverance of will that Pachelbel requires of the basso player in a performance of Canon in D.


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## Sudonim (Feb 28, 2013)

I have not listened to it yet - it's in my pile - but I'd have to imagine that Morton Feldman's String Quartet No. 2, which consumes somewhere between five and six hours to perform, would be taxing in the extreme to the performers (as well as anyone attempting to attend to a live performance). Make sure you eat and go to the bathroom before you start!


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## Ukko (Jun 4, 2010)

Crudblud said:


> He's quite well regarded among contemporary composers, but I'm not surprised you don't know him.


I only know of Rihm because he is paired with Berg (the violin concerto) on an LP.

In response to the original question: Going by the recordings I have heard, Liszt's sonata must be difficult for the performer to get a firm grasp on. The 'point' (Rachmaninoff's concept of 'point') must be slippery or otherwise elusive.


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## CyrilWashbrook (Feb 6, 2013)

peeyaj said:


> Horror of Horrors!


Back in a sec, just need to reattach my ears.


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## Manxfeeder (Oct 19, 2010)

arpeggio said:


> As an amateur bassoonist and my experiences are limited. The are three orchestral works and two band work that were terribly difficult for me to play.
> 
> Stravinsky _Rite of Spring_. All those shifting meters.


Do you find the bassoon solo at the beginning difficult, being way at the top of your range?


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## Andreas (Apr 27, 2012)

Mitsuko Uchida says there are passages in Debussy's Etudes that one gets right only 30 percent of the time.


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## arpeggio (Oct 4, 2012)

*Rite Bassoon Solo*



Manxfeeder said:


> Do you find the bassoon solo at the beginning difficult, being way at the top of your range?


Actually the infamous solo is one of the easier parts. You are the only one playing it. During the session I read it the conductor just nodded at me to start playing it when I was ready. He did not start conducting until I was finished. I usually warm-up by knocking off that solo. It is the rest of the work that is such a challenge, especially the rhythms in the final sacrificial dance.


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## tdc (Jan 17, 2011)

Joaquin Rodrigo has written some notoriously difficult music for guitar. In the 2005 GFA (world guitar competition) Jermome Ducharme performed Rodrigo's _Three Spanish Pieces_, he ended up altering passages of the _Passacaglia_ that were crushingly difficult in order to make them playable, he also made a few mistakes yet still ended up winning the competition.

A few years ago I attended a recital of guitarist Marcin Dylla who also performed Rodrigo's _Three Spanish Pieces_, and he also made a few mistakes.


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## cwarchc (Apr 28, 2012)

Much as I'm a lover of his works, I feel that this would be a challenge to appreciate and perform
Not as such for the complexity, more for the endurance/stamina required:lol:


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

peeyaj said:


> Horror of Horrors!


To each his own... some would be more horrified to endure sitting through forty minutes of Brahms, or feel like their life is going by while they are dying (_and that not in a good way_) while listening to the seemingly endless wholesale repeats in some of the 'Sublime' late piano sonatas of Schubert.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

For a while, at least, Elliott Carter's _Double Concerto for piano, harpsichord and 2 chamber orchestras_ from 1961, held the title as the most difficult of all pieces to perform.





The Carter rated for complexity of the notes, the rhythms, including metric modulation, one or more of the soloists or groups running at different tempi throughout the piece (poly-temporal, which often requires two or more conductors) advanced instrumental techniques, and all the rest.

It may have easily then been bumped from that rank by a later work, but it is still up there in the panoply of works very difficult to perform.

It is not just technique, or stamina, but _intellectual prowess_ which is the real magician in these affairs, the performer(s) all holding their concentration at such a demanding and peak level for the duration of the piece.

Giving any of the Boulez sonatas more than a run for their money, is
Jean Barraque - Sonate pour Piano, an extensive work of a fair length of duration. here, link 1/5





Back on the Common Practice farm, it is going to take one kind of massive memory and both physical and mental stamina to perform Beethoven's Diabelli variations, and similar energy but from a very different aspect to pull off Brahms' second piano concerto as soloist -- the first is a series of variations, the second a forty-minute long tightly structured work.


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## hello (Apr 5, 2013)

PetrB said:


> For a while, at least, Elliott Carter's _Double Concerto for piano, harpsichord and 2 chamber orchestras_ from 1961, 'held the title' as 'the most difficult of all pieces to perform.'
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Why all the quotation marks? Where are we, hipsterrunoff?


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

hello said:


> Why all the quotation marks? Where are we, hipsterrunoff?


Conceded: terrible air quote habit, just clutters the page. Motor habits (transferred from a lifetime of piano playing) conspire against and do not help when wishing to eradicate those when sitting at the alpha keyboard. Just thought of this the other day. May actually be able to do better if I keep the old dog mind at bay.

_P.s. You did mean *'hipsterrunoff'* didn't you?_


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

Andreas said:


> Mitsuko Uchida says there are passages in Debussy's Etudes that one gets right only 30 percent of the time.


See, and listen, for yourself. These are certainly up there with the Chopin _Etudes_ and Liszt's _Transcendental Etudes_
Amazing music, incidentally


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## GraemeG (Jun 30, 2009)

arpeggio said:


> Actually the infamous solo is one of the easier parts. You are the only one playing it. During the session I read it the conductor just nodded at me to start playing it when I was ready. He did not start conducting until I was finished. I usually warm-up by knocking off that solo. It is the rest of the work that is such a challenge, especially the rhythms in the final sacrificial dance.


All of our bassoonists baulked at a fearsomely fast - and utterly exposed - little solo in the last movement of Beethoven's 4th. It even sounds fearsomely hard to play. Check it out...
GG


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

GraemeG said:


> All of our bassoonists baulked at a fearsomely fast - and utterly exposed - little solo in the last movement of Beethoven's 4th. It even sounds fearsomely hard to play. Check it out...
> GG


...and that much more virtuoso-demanding on the period instruments for which they were written


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## Jimm (Jun 29, 2012)

peeyaj said:


> What kind of classical music or piece that is the most difficult to perform given the technical capabilities of a performer? It can be a solo, chamber or orchestral piece. I heard a lot of modern music that is very very hard o perform..


Stockhausen was the most innovative, diverse and farthest reaching of those spawned from the most radically experimental period in musical history (just after ww2) .. his work not only stretches & challenges musical parameters but also notions of performance practice, instrumental & technological capabilities, performance space/logistics, listening etc ..


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## Neo Romanza (May 7, 2013)

After listening to Hartmann's complete symphonic cycle many times, I now conclude that in order for musicians to play this music correctly, you must drink 20 energy drinks and 30 pills of ginseng.  I describe his music as 'Expressionist ecstasy.'


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