Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Pianist Corner Ranking of mozart sonatas and fantasies on difficulty

Could someone please rank the mozart sonatas and fantasies from easiest to most difficult?

If you pay me. There are quite a few. :P

(Sorry - I know that was completely useless. :P)

I found this from a different online forum using a quick Google search, and this may be some help:



This is the link to the original thread.

I would consider that virtually impossible, although we could sort of put them in "groups."

Overall I wouldn't consider any one of the sonatas particularly easy. Some are not as difficult as others, and each one has its easy places and more difficult places as well.

Now after saying that, K. 545 in C may look easy, however it is not when it is played correctly with emotion and control. Unfortunately it is played mechanically with the notes banged out on the piano in a boring and lifeless fashion. The other thing too is there are more than two movements to this sonata, and the finale is quite difficult (tricky is more like it).

There's a lot more to this music than the notes. When played correctly these pieces are really a treat to play and hear.

John

Absolutely. Even if we put it just "musically" or "beautifully" -- the heck with emotion or control.

BUT......I'm figuring that the question is on a different level than what we're talking about -- asking about just "sort of" playing the pieces, i.e. just basically "getting the notes" and other barest basics.

On that level, I think we can indeed put the sonatas into sort of "groups," I think maybe about 3 groups, although depending on how much of a splitter as opposed to a lumper we are, we could make it more. The way you're looking at it, which is how I do, they're all so difficult that I could hardly split them.

Getting the notes is very easy with most of the Mozart sonatas. I could probably learn the notes to a movement of any of the sonatas in less than a week (some of them I can even sight read up to tempo), but it takes me significantly longer to get it to sound good. When it comes to Mozart, it's never about just playing the notes, because that's the easiest part. Anyone who knows their basic scales and arpeggios could hit all the right notes with the right timing. Try listening a MIDI of Mozart. His music has to sing.

I'm not really an expert on this issue. I'm only learning my first Mozart sonata...previously I was doing mostly Haydn and some Beethoven.

I definitely do not think that K310 should be one of the hardest ones... That was the first Mozart piece I learned

I've "played" them all ("played" is a strong word here) tons of times, so this is my ranking from easiest to hardest, fully from a technical standpoint; as has been said millions of times, it's hard to get Mozart to sound right.

K. 545 in C Major
K. 282 in Eb Major
K. 570 in Bb Major
K. 280 in F Major
K. 570 in Bb Major
K. 331 in A Major
K. 279 in C Major
K. 332 in F Major
K. 283 in G Major
K. 281 in Bb Major
K. 547a in F Major
K. 330 in C Major
K. 533 in F Major
K. 311 in D Major
K. 498a in Bb Major
K. 333 in Bb Major
K. 309 in C Major
K. 457 in C Minor
K. 284 in D Major
K. 310 in A Minor
K. 576 in D Major

I think that's all of them...

Note that although fun to play (especially the last movement), 498a is probably apocryphal.

Hope that helped.

I think it best to bring out our most child-like side when playing Mozart.

All I wanted to see was whether you had K. 576 as the hardest, because that's the only thing I can say specifically on this with any conviction and I was curious if you'd have it that way.

Good job.

K. 576 is a nightmare. It was on my Junior recital, and I probably practiced it more than everything else on the recital combined. It's a wonderful piece, though, and the finale is a joy when it's pulled off well.

K. 284 is hard? Technically, there were only like two portions of that that were of any difficulty to me at all.

The C Major sonata isn't really too difficult; I played that one years ago. I'm not really in any position to comment on the others.

What do you all find so difficult about k310??

I love how Mozart somehow thought he had written an "easy" sonata with K. 576. It's hellish.

Personally? The second and third movements. You need to be pretty solid with your leaps to get a good Presto.

EDIT: Keep in mind that it's all relative. For example, Liszt's transcription of the Beethoven's 4th is one of the "easier" of the set, but of course the "hardest" Mozart sonata can't even be compared to it technically.

I agree with him that if we 'must' rank-order them in some way, K. 310 is one of the hardest. I don't think I would have put it quite that high but it's up there.

What's hard about it? I'd say almost everything. We can begin with how to balance the hands at the opening, and in fact how to balance the 3 notes of the L.H., but let's even forget about such subtleties.

In the 1st movement, 2nd theme: That fluttering 16th note figure in the R.H. is quite hard, even if it might seem not so much. The hand can get easily "confused" on exactly when the hand moves or doesn't move, and this can cause unevenness as well as memory lapses. If you have no trouble with that, it means you're good enough that the question of "which Mozart sonatas are harder/easier" doesn't matter that much to you.
Those 16th note figures in the L.H. are hard to play evenly and melodically for anyone except those with particularly good L.H. technique (not to mention real good ears).

The slow movement has some tough little quick figurations, even aside from issues of phrasing and balance which are very hard too.

The last movement.....well actually I would have thought the level of difficulty was obvious. How about just all those leaps and skips in the L.H.?

It's a very hard piece.

P.S. Thanks for asking, I enjoyed going through these details.

Did he write or say something to make us think that?

If he did, I'd love to take a close look at it -- and my guess is that we could come up with a different interpretation of what he meant.

Uh, this is actually quite famous. He wrote about six easy sonatas ["leichte Klaviersonate"] and string quartets he would plan compose for a daughter of Frederick the Great of Prussia, but he only ended up writing the one (K. 576).

Uh as I said, I'd like to see it specifically. Just having it said like that doesn't tell me much.

I guess I'll get up off my buttt and go look for it....

Interim report:

Wiki has this, which is similar to what you said:

>>In a letter to a fellow Freemason Puchberg, Mozart wrote "meanwhile I am working on six easy piano sonatas for Princess Friederike and six quartets for the King". K. 576 was the only sonata completed.....<<

As said above, this is just "interim" and of course Wiki ain't no great reference, but judging from that, I would wonder what makes anyone think that the one sonata that he completed had anything to do with those six would-be easy sonatas.

Do I honestly think that paragraph is ambiguous about it?

Yes -- totally.

All we see there (so far) is, he was planning to write 6 easy sonatas, and he didn't; and he completed 1 sonata, which could perhaps have been one of those would-be 6.
The fact that the completed one is so hard would seem to suggest it's highly possible that it wasn't one of the 6 easy ones that Mozart talked about.

Will look into it further. At home I have a book of Mozart's letters and I'll see if the relevant one is in there.
Meanwhile if anyone can quote the actual letter......