Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Pianist Corner if you could pick but one piece out of range..

I know this is pretty rarified company, but for those who have limitations (and just about everybody does) what piece that's currently beyond your range for whatever reason, would you pick to be able to play...

For me, hands down, Chopin's 48/1. It's so magnificently, hauntingly majestic I'd just about sell my soul...

Easy one (not the piece, the question):

Feux Follets by Liszt

Busoni's Piano Concerto. Although, I have heard from one person that technically, it's not more difficult than the standard repertoire concerti... It's very long and requires stamina.

Schumann Toccata. My hands are too small for it.

Alkan Concerto for Solo Piano. That piece takes me to a whole new word. The Symphonie is fine, I don't totally understand the Grand Sonate, but I looove the Concerto for Solo Piano.

EDIT: Wow I'm a loser, I picked three. Dang!

Beethoven's Diabelli Variations. Easily. It's just so tremendous, and there's nothing like it.

Rach concerto no. 3.

There's a lot of standard repertoire way outside my range, but almost everything I want to play is at worst a little bit outside it, and therefore attemptable.

But the big exception is Messiaen's Vingt Regards.

-J

I kind of like rach 3

Ginastera sonata #2. One of my strengths is that I'm able to dedicate myself to a piece that is beyond me, stick to it, and ultimately find myself able to play it at something close to tempo and in a satisfactory and musical way--I don't claim to be a talented virtuoso, I just work hard. But hard work wasn't enough for the Ginastera Sonata #2. I had to let it go, and get more realistic.

I was then able to learn and play the Franck "prelude, chorale and fugue," as well as the Schubert sonata 959. Both of these seemed way beyond me when I started, but I succeeded, and am a better pianist for the effort, and I totally love them. But the Ginastera--no. I'm afraid it will always be beyond me, and I love it just as much as the Schubert and Franck--well, not quite. Nothing comes up to Schubert 959 for me.

Tomasino

"Waldstein"

LOL. My signature.

If I could pick a piece out of my present range -- and this means a piece that I'd really love to present with maximum impact, but frankly cannot -- it would be a dead heat between Samuel Barber's Piano Sonata and Elliott Carter's Piano Sonata, both written in the 1940's, and both compelling for different reasons. Barber's, because it is SUCH a riveting expression of wartime emotions; and Carter's, because it is a towering expression of American musical thought in the mid 40's -- borrowing, I would say heavily from Copland, but that's the best.

I can't choose, there are too many. Maybe a tie between "Feux Follets", "Rigoletto paraphrase, and Tarantella(also Liszt).

Saint-Saens: Africa!

AHH that one is so awesome!

You know Hamelin's performance on YouTube? One of my friends went and saw that live!

Indeed, that is one tough tough piece. I've played the First Sonata in performance a few times now, but the Second is an order of magnitude more sophisticated and difficult. The middle of the slow movement always reminded me of a similar section in the analogous part of the Second Concerto by Bartok, but in this case you're playing it by yourself..

And that Ostinato aymara is vicious..

This!

Definitely, but: I'm not convinced they really qualify as "out of range" for Mr. Jones. They may be harder in parts than op.101-- they're certainly longer, and they take their own special kind of endurance-- but (having read through them a few times, granted without working seriously on them), I don't think they're in a completely different league from op.101 (and some other stuff that JJ plays).

-J

Yes, I've read through it and it doesn't seem out of the ordinary in terms of technique.

I was introduced to it by Alfred Brendel, who wrote that it is the greatest piano work of all.

Op. 101 took me three years of work. But you're right, looking at it now, AFTER playing 101 (that's the key thing), only the fugue still scares me..

My answer could change every five minutes - but Villa-Lobos' Rudepoema might the choice for this particular five minutes. Szidon's phenomenal recording turned me on to it, but it is just ridiculously hard to sort out.