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Did the Hanon studies long ago as a student, they were hard as heck!!! Finding I need to bring myself (fingers) up to speed again, so have been working with Czerny. I really like it a lot. I seem to remember Hanon being harder. Your thoughts? Thanks.

I'm not sure that comparisons between Hanon and Czerny are meaningful. Virtually all of the Hanon exercises are in unison, with the right and left hands playing the same notes an octave apart; many are standard scales and arpeggios.

Czerny, on the other hand (no pun intended), has a greater variety of exercises (studies) and certainly many more than Hanon, and the Czerny exercises are other than two-hand unison exercises. There is even greater opportunity for "musical interpretation" in the Czerny than in the Hanon.

Perhaps some of the exercises in Hanon in thirds and sixths are difficult and may be good (if practiced correctly) for finger independence, but I don't consider the Hanon exercises difficult; the only difficulty with them, for me, is that they can lead to boredom in very short order because of their repetitiveness. That said, they may become difficult if they are played as Hanon actually recommends they be played: "Lift the fingers high and play with precision." The manner in which most students interpret those directions can lead to tension and even injury.

With Czerny, are there not virtually hundreds of studies and etudes, (Opp. 139, 299, 300, 337, 355, 453, 599, 672, 740, 754, 755, 777, 840, 848, 849 - to cite just a few!!) from which to find a considerably greater variety than what can be found in Hanon's 60 exercises (many of which are scales and arpeggios)?

Unless you are comparing a single Czerny opus to Hanon, I can't see that any comparison is valid.

Regards,

I'm using both, per my teacher's recommendation. Interesting that you found Hanon more difficult. It takes me much longer to learn a Czerny exercise versus Hanon. To me there are really only a few things to learn on a Hanon assignment, the pattern up, the pattern down and the turnaround, the middle is all repetition. With Czerny there are usually 5 or 6 different patterns in each exercise, so more coordination is required.

Do you find Czerny better for finger speed than scales and arpeggios? I'm thinking that building speed on scales might be more generally applicable to a wider range of pieces, but I'm not sure.

as already said, Hanon and Czerny are very different.
Hanon provides exercises which only train the technical capability of each hand. Virtually no coordination between the hands is required to play Hanon.
Czerny's etudes are basically short pieces which can train both single-hand technique and coordination, but I personally don't see much use for them as at that point you can simply play pieces that you love instead of exercises.
I also think that Hanon is conceptually easier as each exercise can be memorized fast and played right away, while some more work is needed on Czerny.
Between the two I personally prefer Hanon, coupled with playing of other normal repertory.