I want to play Rachmaninoff's Piano concerto No. 3 but i dont know if i should try...but possibly i can get it if i have enough patience, disipline and determination? Has anyone here played it? i want to hear your thoughts. Thx

I never tried to play Rach 3. But I really think you should give it a try. I believe that if you have enough patience and discipline you can play almost anything.
I once surprised my teacher after having completely studied Chopin's minute waltz in three weeks, at the time I was at the level of easy Bach pieces. I had just bought my digital piano (had played on a keyboard until then) at the age of 14 and it contained a recording of the waltz. I loved it and wanted nothing more in the world than to be able to play it. My teacher has been giving me difficult pieces ever since
The most important thing : believe in yourself and you can do miracles.

Michiel

I don't want to rain on your parade but I think that you definately need to have a really really really high level of pure virtuoso to play it. I don't think that it is one of those piece that will come by hard work. Though I don't know what your level of playing is I think that if you need to ask us if we think that you will be able to play it then you are definately not. Though I have been playing piano for only ten or so months i know that chances are even very few piano performance majors can play it half decently.

The great Rach 3 was one of the first piano peices that got me hooked on piano, but I know that it is a feat there very few will accomplish.

LTLR

K, before you even think about it, go buy a copy of the score and look at it. It is actually quite frightening

I definitely would not encourage you to play it. I've tried parts of the first movement and it is pretty overwhelming (See the movie Shine if you know what I mean). I've played his second concerto and it is nothing compared to the third concerto. So, unless your technique is flawless, I would advise you to not attempt this concerto.

Your user name fits you well Krazypaul...
zorro

I have to modify this quote.

If you have had enough patience and discipline for the last 10 years, then you can think about starting Rach 3.

I've never known anyone who could play it at all convincingly without at least 10 years of solid playing experience.

I'd say about 1 out of 1000 people who have studied for ten years could play this piece.

If you have to ask about this piece, the chances of playing it well are about as good as winning the lottery.

Well, the question of if you should play it depends on how good your technique is, how long you have been playing, and how much practice you will be willing to put into your practice of the piece. Even if you were to play it, it probably wouldn't sound good, if you aren't prepared and just banged out the notes. If you really have doubts, then I would suggest you don't play it just yet.

Some pieces are just better to wait on, until one has enough experience, technically, musically, and in front of an audience. I would not exactly put the total at 10 years though, there are many different people with varying talents and ambition, so what one man can do in 10, another can do in less or more time.

The thing is getting enough performance experience in order to play it with an orchestra and with an audience without nerves getting in the way. That requires a good deal of time as well, perhaps many prior performance experiences before one can tackle it.

I'd say if you have 10 fingers, and really love the piece. It should be doable. Who cares if you don't play it as well as Ashkenkrazy or LoloArgerich or whoever plays it on CD. It will be the most beautiful to you when YOU are able to play it.

Yoo Hoo, Frank. Could you put this one in the FAQ folder?

This question - "Should I try to play one of the most difficult pieces in the piano repertoire way before I am able to?" - comes up once in a while.
EHPianist had a sensible response to someone asking the same think about Prok. #3. To paraphrase, she said it's better to wait until you are more advanced, mature and experienced. If you learn a piece like this before you are ready, you will inevitably learn it the wrong way, become frustrated, risk injury, etc.
If you reach a point in the future where you are ready to play it, you will revert back to the bad habits you initially had when you learned it first. Breaking these bad habits and practices will take much longer than learning it correctly in the first place.

Posters here seem to fall into two camps: 1) Those of us who say "Go for it! If you like the piece, why not?", and 2) Those of us who say the disadvantages (risk of injury, frustration, learning the piece incorrectly, and there being another person out there who plays this piece badly) outweigh whatever possible advantages there might be.

Ok, i guess i can hold off for a while longer. by the way, i saw the movie shine, it scares me, what happened to him? was the overwhelming virtuosity of that song that make him crazy?...

He heard someone call it a "song" once too often, and flipped.

I think he was already crazy, or had some disposition towards insanity. I do not think that the difficult of this piece can make one crazy, it isn't even close to being the most difficult work in the repertoire anyway.

Although I can see how one can get obsessed with it, and then go crazy. Well, start to learn it, and then stopped immediately upon hearing voices in your head. That should give you a good idea if you are ready or not.

Where do you come up with these numbers?

Wow, you guys are a bit tough on David Helfgott.

The film "Shine" is not an entirely accurate depiction of his true life (from the producers own mouth, not mine) but rather, it's "peppered" with a few "elasticated" facts to make it more appealing to the public (in which it succeeded by the way).

He did not collapse at the piano playing Rach 3 (it was a long time after in fact) and apparently suffers from a clinical problem (chemical imbalance in his brain the technical term for which escapes me). Frankly, I think the Rach 3 had nothing to do with his "incarceration", just a lack of correct diagnosis of his condition. Interestingly enough, he has recorded the Rach 3 in the last few years (post-"Shine" if I recall correctly).

He still tours all continents and plays many concerts each year. Generally, the public love him (sympathetic maybe?) and critics hate him (he's popular only because of his medical history). Each to his own I guess.

His Bio (about an hour and a half of interviews with him and his family plus one of the concerts he did) is actually quite interesting.

Regards,

Gary.

Reasonable guesses. Do you think they are off?

I think I read that there are around 20,000,000 pianos in the U.S.(any dealers know about this figure?). Assuming at least one player per piano, one thousandth of that figure would be 20,000 people. If one tenth of those people took lessons for 10 years or more, that would be 2000 people capable of meeting the technical challenges of the Rach 3. My gut feeling is that far less than this can do it, but I don't really know. What do you think?

You now, this exact question comes up pretty oftenm and here's the best response I've heard to it:

You want to play the Rach 3? OK, simple. To see if you're ready, and to prepare yourself, learn the complete Preludes and Etudes-Tableaux first. They contain the majority of the technical and musical obstacles needed for the concerto.

So, there's your answer.

Peter (writing on holiday in Nice, France)