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Know Any? Any Piece thats Is Such a Masterpiece but no one plays it a lot.

Rachmaninov 1st Piano Concerto
Beethoven Piano Sonata Op.54
Chopin Tarantella

There are many more, but those were the first I though of.

Grieg Ballade

This thread has been done already - numerous times... Have a look at:

http://www.pianoworld.com/ubb/ubb/ultimatebb.php?/topic/2/16078.html#000001

http://www.pianoworld.com/ubb/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?/topic/2/15422.html#000003

http://www.pianoworld.com/ubb/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?/topic/2/12858.html

I always felt that Beethoven's Op. 101 has been overshadowed by the other four. It's a wonderful sonata and is so seldom programmed.

Debussy's Ballade
Also his Nocturne

Rimsky-Korsakov C# minor Piano Concerto.

Total mystery why this delectable morsel of Imperial Russia is so neglected.

Then there's always Prokofiev's 5th.

For solo piano music, Franck's Prelude, Aria & Finale is unaccountably neglected (or perhaps it's just out of fashion), though its rather uncompromising difficulties -it requires large hands- don't help.

For me it Saint-Saens Piano Concerto #2

I certainly wouldn't classify this as "underplayed," and whether it's a masterpiece might also be up for debate; it's decidedly the most frequently played of all of Saint-Saens' concerti.

Regards,

I would probably put that in the overplayed category...

I don't think Rzweski's The People United is played enough.

I have a feeling I've posted in a similar thread. Nevertheless:

Leo Ornstein - Fourth Piano Sonata
Leopold Godowsky - Java Suite
Isaac Albeniz - Fourth Piano Sonata
Saint-Saens - Fifth Piano Concerto

It's an inane topic, but hey, I can do inane.

First an honorary bow to a previous list of beautiful pieces, which as it happens, are all underplayed masterpieces as well:

Charles Ives: First and Second ("Emerson") Sonatas.
Roger Sessions: Second Piano Sonata
Galina Ustvolskaya: Sixth Piano Sonata
Michael Tippett: Second and Third Piano Sonatas
Anton Webern: Variations
Aaron Copland: Piano Variations
Einojuhani Rautavaara: Second Piano Concerto

I'd add the Sessions Third Sonata and the Copland Fantasy under the works for those composers in the list.

There are many masterpieces in Vincent Persichetti's worklist, and ALL are underplayed. I'd pick out the 10th piano sonata, the 4-hand concerto (sans orchestra) and the piano concerto as particularly in need of more exposure.

Even though there has been something of a modest boom in attention to Alkan's works in my life, they are all underplayed as far as I am concerned, and we need a much broader range of interpretation of his music from a much wider range of artistic types. The sonatine and the 5 books of chants in particular need more attention.

The situation is somewhat similar with Medtner. We really need people like Argerich and Ohlsson and Ax and Zimerman, et al., to be bringing their insights to his stuff, because his writing is top drawer. But at least Medtner has had some real, if spotty, representation in the repertoires of the higher echelon of pianists.

The Dukas sonata is underplayed to some extent, but also from that time and place, the really underplayed masterpiece is the big d'Indy sonata, which has had no really excellent recording (the Girod is the best I've heard, but it really leaves a lot to be desired).

I think Ginastera's first piano concerto is some kind of a masterpiece, even if a bit lurid, and considering how the finale can make an audience go completely nuts, it is absurdly underplayed. My dream team for it: Argerich and Dudamel with the Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra. They could cause outbreaks of utter ecstatic pandemonium with it. Argerich actually scheduled the piece some seasons back, but backed out of it, claiming she hadn't learned it, which if true, would mean she basically hadn't even picked it up for a look - very naughty of her.

Oh, well, a list like this is endless - there's stuff by Stenhammer, and Hummel, and Reubke, and Tviett, and Xenakis, and Harrison, and Mennin, and many many many more that would qualify.

I think you need to look up the word 'inane' in a good dictionary. Your post and threads like this one can be informative to some of us, while being easily accessible & digestible for those of us who have an Internet connection & whose alimentary canals aren't devoted to eating badly aimed trips to the local library, nor devoted, either, to drinking conservatory training, not devoted, I say, for no other reason than that they actually do have something better to do. (From "Lessons in Cutting Insult with Compliment (and vice versa)". Of course the substance is much more varied. Sometimes difficult to penetrate into if you're not an absolute connoisseur of such stuff. Fewer and fewer of those these days, while the amount of people who can read & write in the mundane sense is greater than ever.)

Ah, I'll just make a small contribution as well, lest some moderator think my humble self completely insane, and remove my subtly relevant post.

Mozart K 396. May not be top-notch Moz, but it's still pretty darn... fits the request.

Wow, didn't know that. I don't know how I missed out on it for so long.

I wish they would overplay it in my area *sniff*

Dohnanyi Etude no.4... about 2:30 into the piece there is the most beautiful melody I have ever heard

Fur Elise
Rondo ala Turka (not the Volodos version)
Pachelbel's Canon


Tell me -- how often do concert pianists perform these pieces?

I once heard Pogorelich open a recital with Fur Elise - it was mesmerizing. But it's true - most concert pianists don't perform children's pieces during their recitals, as a rule.

The Arkiv website show over a hundred recordings of the sonata that contains the Rondo, so I don't think there's any shortage of pianists playing it. And that's not counting the recordings of just the Rondo alone...

Why would a pianist play the Pachelbel, since it's not a keyboard piece? Not to mention that for many musicians and music-lovers, it is the epitome of mindless maddening meaningless Baroque note-spinning, and many of us would run screaming for the door if some pianist decided to program a transcription of it. Sorry, if this is news to you.

What is a "children's piece"? A lot of kids play Beethoven and Mozart sonatas -- are those children's pieces?

There are also over 100 recordings of K. 457, 88 recordings of K. 330, 87 of K. 310... the sonata k. 331 (includes rondo ala turka) is slightly the most recorded, at 106 recordings, but that hardly makes it "overplayed". And how often is it performed? I've been to a fair number of concerts, and I've never heard it ever (except the rondo at a couple of kids' recitals, but that's not what I'm referring to here.)

Pianists perform transcriptions all the time. I just heard Yuja Wang perform 3 encores, and all 3 were transcriptions (one was her own transcription of an aria by Gluck, which was wonderful). I know Pachelbel gets bad rap among classical musicians, but if Murray Perahia or Evgeny Kissin were to perform their own transcription, I think they'd get applause, not an audience on their feet racing for the doors. I think it would be viewed as a novelty -- because it's rarely performed.

After I posted, I started wondering whether you were making a joke. I guess not.

Fur Elise is a childrens' piece, the Hammerklavier is not; see the difference? I think Beethoven did.

All of Mozart is overplayed, seeing there are dozens of recordings of practically everything except maybe some juvenilia. Some of the sonatas don't turn up in recital simply because they don't fill seats, and they aren't necessarily top-notch Mozart. There was one I heard at a Biss recital last year that was simply not very good; so much for the idea of Mozart as the genius who couldn't make a mistake. Haydn, Hummel, Dussek, Clementi - now there are some underplayed piano sonatas that are masterpieces.

My point about the Pachelbel wasn't about transcriptions, but because the piece is so painfully simple-minded that no one should have to hear it more than once in their lifetime. I think both Perahia and Kissin have enough self-respect that they wouldn't be caught dead playing it (and anyway, neither pianist is known for writing their own transcriptions, I don't think). And it has been played to death during the course of the dumbing down of classical radio in the US (I'm not sure about its status in the rest of the world). Maybe you could spend some time considering exactly why the thing has such a bad rap among classical musicians, eh? It's no masterpiece; that much is a certainty.