1. hmmm ... yeahhh they are a lot of chalenging and difficult compositions and compositors, especialy in modern music, but they really write some craps, most of them intentionally to seem brave.
Sorabji, Xenakis, Staravinsky, Martino and other difficult modern composers ... 4 hours of playing of crap music ... a-tonal , inharmonical , a-ryhmical music ... total bulshitt.
they ar concerts for piano longest that "crap cembalisticum", who take 8 hours , and pieces that you need 5 hands to play ... but they value something ? for me ... NOTHING. do you want to write you a composition who take 4 hours to play and you need 3 hands ... i write in maximum one day, but that is not music for me.
i like beatifull, harmonical , rhythmical, tonal , profund and difficult(physiqualy and psychically) music.
2. and other thing that i observe on this thread is that from your point of view it`s seems difficult pieces that seems very easy for me. chopin balades ? beethoven sonates ? ... ha ha ha. i consider difficult pieces that are hard to play for giffted pianists not for a 10 years or 30 years experience pianists. from 10.000 pianists whit 30 years experience only 1 is a genius.
i consider difficult the music that is hard to play for that giffted pianist and in the same time is harmonical, rythmical, tonal, profound and here is a short clasiffication:
EASY:
Field, Schubert, Gershwin, Joplin, Tchaikovsky, Beethoven, Mozart, Albenitz, Chopin, Czerny, Offenbach, Scarlatti, Ravel, etc
MEDIUM:
Bach, Medtner, Scriabin, Balakirev, Rachmaninoff, Bortkiewicz , Busoni, Liszt, MacDowell, etc
HARD:
Godowsky, Alkan
i make this top, listening over 70% of works that those composers wrote for the piano (exept czerny,macdowell,bortkiewicz). i list only the known composers (whit few excepts). i also have listening compositions for piano of over 200 composers before 1950 year like: Mendelssohn, Henselt, Moszkowski, Paderewski , Corelli, Brahms, Weber, Scharwenka, Sauer ,Parry, Stanford, Massenet, Hahn, Huss, Clementi, Schelling, Marx, Korngold, Lyapunov, Fuchs, Ligeti, Hummel, Kiel ,Kullak, Dreyschock, Quilter, Gabrilovich, Levitzki, Palmgren, Tausig, Rubinstein, etc ... etc
my favorites composers are Chopin and Alkan . Alkan is the greatest ... he`s a mystic of piano music and those who like profund and difficult keyboard music are irrecoverable inlove by him once they discover him.
read some alkan biography here (ore use google for more details):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles-Valentin_Alkan
and an example of difficult composition here (listen the end part):
http://www.nanasawa.net/articulates/audio/1009-13.swf
they are a lot of difficult and profund compositions on this level in alkan music :
Part 3 of Concerto for Solo Piano - Allegretto alla barbaresca, part 2 of Concerto da camera op 10 no 2- Tempo , Etude no. 07 Op 35 'L'incendie au village voisin' , Grande Sonate 20 ans , Grande Sonate 30 ans ,etc, etc
they are only a 20 pianist in this century who had courage to play alkan music in public, and personnel i like only two: Hamelin and Ringeissen. other like Laurent Martin, Ronald Smith have not enough speed ... Lewenthal and Ogdon have not enough sensitivity of this kind of profund music.
if you want to send you some samples of Alkan music write me an email on invizibil2002@yahoo.com
p.s is hard rachmaninov third concerto ??? is hard a concerto that 1 terminal year student from 10 (from a conservatoire) is playing it acceptable. i think NOT.
im playing piano about 6 years... when i say hard i mean just a little bit harder than APPASSIONATA .
