Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Pianist Corner What did you work on that you really hated?

Of all the music I worked on over the years, I really do not like Beethoven's Ecossaise in G major, WoO.23. I worked on these when I had studied about three years of piano, but even to this day, this piece makes my skin crawl. I just can't get myself to look at it. :rolleyes:

So what do you ladies and gents totally dislike and why?

John

Some of the standard Bach and Mozart I find incredibly fun to listen to, but incredibly boring to play. Also, some of the more obscure Chopin pieces drive me nuts. I'm really not sure why they irk me...for me, there's no sense of 'freedom' when I play them, it's just mechanical repetition, so I generally try to steer clear of them.

I suppose it's because, while they're good 'songs', they don't tell as great a story as other works, and the more fantastical the story, the more interested I am in playing the piece.

i never really hate anything i play, since i always select what i want to learn. but Derulux might be right, i felt sometimes that Mozart is boring to play. i remember a couple months ago when i was working on learning 2nd and 3rd movement of K545, i got incredibly bored. on the other hand, i haven't found any Beethoven i played boring, even Fur Elise!

Bach Two-Part Invention #8 in F major... it was just a technical excersize.... teacher, if you want me to do technique, just give me technique! Even that would have been more enjoyable than learning this piece of music was!

There are verry few pieces which I studed that I really hated. The very few which fall into that category were all in my early years as a student perscribed by my teacher who gave me no choice.

Sadly to say one of them is MacDowell's "To a wild rose".

The minuets from Bach's Partita No. 1 in B flat. I didn't like them, but my teacher at the time insisted that I play them. I dislike playing Bach to this day...

I did this one piece called Jagdlied, by Schubert. It was all these big chords - never a break of the 2 pages - and the timing 6/8. I had to practise like heck to get the melody line going, and my hands hurt everytime I finished practising!

I really hated that piece!

Generally, I do as well.

As do I. I forced to spend basically my whole 1st year of piano playing Bach, and it haunts me to this day.

I like playing Bach!

I haven't played anything I dislike in years. But I am a senior citizen and essentially I select the pieces I want to play. My teacher just assists me to master them.

As for the person who hated MacDowell's "To a Wild Rose." I dislike the piece too, as overly sentimental to the point of being saccharine.

But MacDowell has many pieces that are far better-- don't write him off until you try one or two others.

There have been pieces which, at first, I could not stand learning to play, but eventually they all grew on me. For example, when I first played Chopin I started with the C#- Waltz and the A major Polonaise, and I could not stand either of them; I guess it was this whole new concept of playing Chopin. However, as I went on I started to warm to them, and now I love both pieces. The same thing happened when I first started playing Debussy (The Sunken Cathedral).

For me it's the opposite. I find much of Bach and Mozart rather boring and irksome to listen to, but incredibly addictive and fun to play. I dunno...

btw, i like playing Bach, but it's just that his music frustrates me sometimes. to me, Bach is never boring, just hard to play well...

It's not my fault you're bass-ackwards. :p *laughs*

There are many pieces by both that I enjoy playing, but I find I'd rather listen to the vast majority of the repertoire than sit at a piano and learn it. I just have no desire to play it.

This has been interesting, and it's gotten me to think about this again.

For me the only thing I didn't like was the Ecossaise, and now that I think of it, the teacher assigned it to me without me having much to say about it. "You're doing this... and that's that." Everything else I've picked on my own, or with the teacher's suggestion chose something from a composer.

John

Interesting... I like every composition that's been mentioned. from the Beethoven to the Mozart.
The MacDowell, the Chopin, and the Schubert.
Though I haven't worked on them (why would I take on a piece that I hated?)there are pieces of every composer that I dislike. Even if I had a teacher that told me I had to study a piece I didn't like, I simply wouldn't do it. Life is to short to be forced to learn music you hate.
Plus, music is purely pleasure for me. What would be the purpose.

Not so much a piece I hated, but I started learning the Barotk Six Roumanian Folk Dances and sort of lost interest in them. Had all the notes learned, the first three memorized and the last two almost up to performance level then put them aside to work on some other stuff that was more technically challenging. I've never done that before. Maybe I'll pick them up again at some other time.

I think, for me, Bach just gets tedious after practicing it constantly. I love playing it at first, but I slowly begin to hate it. But the piece I absolutely abhorred was Waltz in c# minor by Chopin because it was out of my league (I was younger then) and I simply could not get it. But now, it's one of my favorite pieces

Martinu Trio for Piano, Viola, and Flute. Tasteless.

A lot of the piano ensemble stuff for my piano class is loud, overblown and ineffective. I abhor some of it. There are those few gems though.
Also, some accompaniment I've played has been pretty nasty...

I've never played anything I haven't wanted to - amateur's privilege - that's why I earn my money in other ways to support my music.

I really struggled with the Bartok Op. 14 suite for piano. I had always enjoyed listening to this piece and to Bartok in general, and thought the piece would be fun to play. But when it came to learning it I just could not get a handle on it. When I hear it I feel rather more wistful now!

same thing for me!

Well, its a fact of life for music majors and pianists pursuing a performance career. You are expected to play a very diverse repertoire. And when presented with a piece that your teacher dictates, its about learning and growing as a pianist. So I did have to play much stuff I didnt care for. Often, you dont know you dont like it unitl knee deep into it, as you hadnt heard of it prior.

I think Prokoffievs Visions Fugitives was high on the list of barfarama for me. Lots of 20th century piano works dont do it for me. percussive cacophonous uninspired noise. There are some that I do like tho.

I didnt do a lot of accompanying in college, but from the little I did, I can say the piano accompaniments for vocal and brass are insufferable!!! So unpianistic. I hated having to play those. I liked accompaniments for strings and woodwinds.

now that I'm no longer a slave to academia, I shall enjoy only playing what and how I like. HUZZAH!!

I wasn't talking about you or music majors. I was talking about me.

The only two composer's music that I strongly hate have to be Bach, and Mozart. Even though Mozart is a little better everything just sounds the same. Bach is way to simple. I mean I could write better songs.

This would be a Bach song in F minor
R.H-F F F A A A C# C# C# F F F
L.H-F F F F F F F F F F F F

Boring...

Well, to each their own - I personally love Bach. I find it funny that you're actually outlining an F augmented triad instead of an f-minor triad in your example...

There isn't much I don't like. I hated Bartok when my teacher first gave me some of his stuff to work on, but it's really grown on me and now I quite enjoy it. I'm not super big on Schumann or Haydn, but I wouldn't go so far as to say I hate it.

Outside of piano music, I really can't stand Strauss, Waldteufel, or any of those other guys who wrote nothing other than Viennese waltzes - I find that extremely boring and it annoys/puzzles me that they're so wildly popular, but again, to each their own...

Further amusement is this is a discussion of piano repertoire, and he's talking about Bach "songs". do the math.

I've only been here for three months, and have seen the "song" v "piece" debate go blasting through the forum at least four times. LET IT REST. There's nothing wrong with saying "song" instead of any other terminology. "Song" is a word in the English language that appropriately identifies any work. It does not speak to the knowledge or intelligence of the poster.

(Though a Bach Fm would probably have had an Ab with a C, and not an A with a C#.... )

Well, I wasnt here for the other threads on the topic, but I believe you are mistaken. A piano sonata is not appropriately called a song. Period. And it does indeed speak to the experience and knowledge of the poster (I didnt imply intelligence). Maybe someone can find a dictionary reference that might support such a usage, but thats irrelevant. Anyone who has studied music in any serious capacity is well aware what a song is and is not. And this is a forum of musicians.

If you or anybody wants to use the vernacular, you're entitled, but expect some remarks in return. But to attempt to defend its usage as appropriate in a serious discussion of classical music isnt gonna fly. Its wrong. As wrong as calling a sculpture a picture, or calling a commercial a tv show.

Mmm well excuse me, for calling it a song. Only Bach didn't write it I made it up. I can call it whatever I please Mmk?

LOL! Fair enough!!!

Siddhartha- I would like to point you to the thread concerning Beethoven's 5th. pianojerome posted an article there which, I think, at least in the first post, seems to explain my position exactly.

I've been fortunate that none of my teachers has ever insisted that I play something I didn't like. I think with the wide range of repertoire available out there I'd proably get another teacher if they did. One question: a few folks upthread have spoken about pieces that are boring to listen to but fun to play (or vice versa) and I don't really understand this (my teacher speaks of it as well). How can you like playing something that you don't like listening to?

Well, there's something to be said for both approaches - either sticking to repertoire you like or being forced to branch out, but I would lean towards a teacher that tries to stretch you occasionally. When I first started, I wanted to play nothing but Beethoven and Chopin. But my teacher gave me a lot of tastes of other composers that I would not otherwise have been exposed to. For instance, I quite enjoy Bartok now, and I love Bach. IMHO there's too much great music out there to simply ignore because you only want to deal with certain composers. Plus, I find if I play too much of one composer's music, I get bored. As great as Beethoven's piano music is, I don't think I could just focus on his music exclusively without changing it up with contrasting works.

maybe you should post some of the scores for your "better songs" that you've composed scriabin.I would love to have a look. Wait a minute, werent you looking to play some Bach and Mozart pieces for your "foundation".
I also recall you not knowing how the well tempered clavier "works" :rolleyes:
just to let ya know. A's are flat in f-minor

Go ahead, walk into a room of well trained musicians, tell them that you hate mozart,
bach is simple, and their "songs" all sound the same. you will be laughed out the door.

dude, that was painfully ignorant.

I won't use the word "hate", but years ago I worked on and did NOT enjoy "Golliwog's Cakewalk". Uughh.