Which era of music do you guys find the hardest?
Baroque
Classical
Romantic
Impressionistic
Contemporary

Personally, I find Classical music the hardest. In classical music, everything can be heard and there has to be lots of clarity and precision.

Inpressionistic/contemporary for me. I can't play music unless I "get it." And I definitely don't "get it" with the more modern stuff.

For me, Beethoven is the hardest composer to play. His music almost always reaches beyond my means.

Ugh, I'm actually starting to feel more comfortable working on Ligeti etudes than on Beethoven's first concerto. It simply will not stick[/b].

Bach (but otherwise the era's fine)

Bach

I think when you play Bach you've got to have well thought-out fingering, imaginative phrasing, lot's of contrasting staccatos and legatos, and refined dynamics. The rest is spiritual.

No, it's following his sublime thought that's the difficulty. I wouldn't know about spiritual.

Yes, Brendan. I've seen you play Messiaen too.

"Ugh", the Mozart K503 won't "stick" either.

For my own pleasure and satisfaction I've been working on that Mozart concerto. Yesterday evening I almost gave up. The teens on the board will no doubt think it too easy, and the sovereign masters on the board might say "we told you so".

Whatever. I'm stuck in the middle, and there is scarcely a measure in Mozart's divine inspiration that does not pose a severe challenge.

It is very depressing.

At least I'm in the company of Anda, Brendel, Perahia, Uchida, and Argerich who have all successfully negotiated this mine field. I guess perhaps I know it can be done... and good on them...

For me anything polyphonal, so I guess the hardest on average is baroque.

But I greatly admire (late) Beethoven pieces that also have fugues and fugato parts. I once tried to study Beethovens op. 101 and I could play the notes of the extraordinary development of the last movement, but it was too hard to make music out of it.

glad you said that..

his hands must have been huge and so strong. it seems to me he thought in orchestral terms with the piano playing all instruments as loud as possible at all times.

Non-German Romantic

I'm more comfortable with Beethoven Op. 101 than most Chopin Preludes. Go figure...

Beethoven basically is a lot harder. In fact, I'd place Beethoven's 1st concerto above Rach 3, Appassionata above Islamey, Hammerklavier above Gaspard De La Nuit, Waldstein above Hungarian Rhapsodies, And his late sonatas above Ligeti/Alkan Etudes.

There is something in his music which seems to be beyond my technical and musical grasps...despite me playing them for a long time now...

Baroque and Bach. i like Bach, but find his music just so difficult to get under fingers and memorize, and so easy to slip away even if i did memorize some... i think the difficulty with Bach is kind of mental, and it's not entirely technical.

for me Beethoven and Romantic are not mentally difficult but technically, but technical difficulties can be practiced and mastered eventually though... it's still different from what's with Bach.

I agree with everything except for the Alkan. You should study deeply the score of his etudes.

Disregarding that, Beethoven is some of the best, and deepest music. It is the depth that adds difficulty and that keeps me coming back for more.

For me, Bach is cruel and unusual punishment. But I love it just the same.

I haven't played any contemporary music, so I can't judge the difficulty, but I've seen the score to Ligeti's etudes, and they look wicked.

Anything from the Classical period. While they certainly have their moments, I generally don't 'get' Mozart, Haydn, Schubert or Beethoven. You may now gasp in abject horror........

Bach. I just can't seem to get it memorized. Also, I am so busy trying to remember which fingers to use that the spiritual part of the compostion gets lost. One finger on the wrong key and I am in trouble. Yet, I absolutely adore Bach. Gaby Tu

I also have the same problem with memorizing Bach's music. It takes me quite a bit of time to do.

Musically though, haydn and mozart sonatas (not so much with beethoven) will just eat me alive.

Definately the Baroque-period.

Typically Mozart gets the short change... as I expected in this thread.

Mozart is really too easy for any consideration here and I apologize for wasting people's time. A fraction of the notes in Rach 3... therefore Mozart must be a walk in the park...

Musical challenges be damned.

But when does the pomposity ever end?

Mozart, who was he? African maybe. That would explain the Turkish rhythms. He played camel's hide pianos and the viola a little. What did *he* know about anything? Musical challenges, he couldn't even make coffee without dancing on the beans, and tripping...

Baroque is the toughest for me.

I'm a Mozart guy!

The clarity needed for Mozart is just incredible. On top of that, because of the "simpler" (can't think of a better word for it) harmonies in Mozart's music, an audience can hear every little thing.

Mozart is not simple (In my opinion). Although the quantity of notes may be small, the quality and placement of each is what gives each sonata its own charm and dificulty. No note can be left out or misplayed, any unclarity can ruin a sonata. This is intellegent music, this is Mozart.

Baroque and Contemporary.

The fugues in Baroque music such as Bach are especially tricky but are good practice for learning to spot hidden melodies and bring them out.

Prokofiev and such composers are difficult because, for one, their music does not follow the typical pattern that previous composers followed. Not only that, but it requires a lot of tricky passages in terms of hand positioning and awkward fingering.

Romantic has always seemed to be my strongest period, I enjoy it the most and I seem to have more of an affinity towards it.

Ever actually looked at a Mozart score, like his Fantasia in C Minor (Not the K475)... or the K475 for that matter? Monstrous!

I'll probably shock everyone by saying that I find the Romantic era (with the exception of Brahms, who is part of my pianistic bread and butter, along with Beethoven and Mozart) incredibly difficult. Most of the composers that are usually thought of as "pianistic" (Chopin, Liszt, Rachmaninov) I find next to impossible to play. I wouldn't touch any Liszt with a ten foot pole (the B minor Ballade, maybe). I'm starting to make some inroads in Chopin (second Ballade, a few etudes), but it's still a long way ahead.
And let me put in another vote for the difficulties of Mozart. The old saying concerning Mozart and children and adults really is true. Most particularly the piano concerti -- goodness knows how often I had to bear with a typically mechanical performance of those masterpieces! And another thing about Mozart -- if one doesn't thoroughly know his operas (especially from Idomeneo onwards), one doesn't know his rhetoric and his musical syntax, and therefore one cannot truly appreciate and understand his music. Mozart is perhaps my favorite composer of all time, but that only became true when I got to know his operas, and then listening to the rest of his works with new ears.

Well, i didn't mean that the music was simple, just the harmonies (compared to composers of all the other eras). It's this harmonic simplicity that allows every nuance in the performance to be heard, which makes it difficult.

Mozart isn't the only composer with "intelligent" music. Take a look at Bach.

It's been more than 35 years since I last brought a Mozart sonata up to something like performance standard, and I still haven't recovered from the experience. My comfort zone lies between Chopin and Rachmaninoff, though Prokofieff, Stravinsky, Messaien and other moderns also get me going. But there is a lightness of touch, a precision of timing and the absolute inability to hide your mistakes in Mozart's piano music that scares me away.

It may be mostly in my head, since I love (and do fairly well) playing Haydn sonatas. But I'm afraid that for me, Mozart will always be a passion enjoyed on CD rather than at the keyboard. Whenever I feel the need of a dose of musical clarity, I play my favorite recordings of the Haffner and Jupiter symphonies, the Requiem, the last 3 violin concertos, any piano concerto from no. 9 up, or sonata performances by Mozart greats like Haskill, Uchida and Perahia. It always does the trick for me, and it saves Mozart the trouble of spinning in his grave. Maybe in the next life.

Gould, the great humanist (may he rest well), got Mozart a self-spinning grave, before em-barking on his Mozart sonata traversal. So it's no trouble, no trouble at all, he would say.

Yep, the lightness but firmness of touch. But mostly the timing. The more accurate you are the more you hear, then the more accurate you need to be, and so on. With Mozart there seems no end. With Bach it's revelation after revelation.