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I have been thinking recently about writing a piano concerto. One thing that worries me is that I might write an interval that is too big for most people to play. I'm not fully grown yet but I have pretty big hands (left has a span of 23 cm and right has a span of 22 cm), both being able to comfortably hold down keys that are up to the interval of a major tenth apart. Is it safe to write stretches like that all the time in my piano concerto?

Hello Rachmaninoff ; -)

Well, if you really want stretches of a 10th apart then write them, you might consider writing in optional notes, or just acknowledging that some may have to play octaves instead of 10ths... in this case you may want to make sure that the 10th is not a fully necessary part of the score (say in a fast moving portion). I have smaller hands and when I encounter 10ths in say, Brahms, I often will simply roll the chord or interval. If your intervals are sustained it's probably not a big deal for this reason. If you're writing a sixteenth note run on the other hand....

Keep in mind who will be playing your music, if you're writing for yourself go for it. If you're writing for accessibility or students, keep it tamed to them, you can always write as you hear and feel it... then modify. Have fun!

Why would you want to write tenths ALL THE TIME in a concerto? There are so many different techniques, so it doesn't seem reasonable to stick to that one...

Compose up to your ability, do not limit what you notate to consider the smaller handed people, think about Paganini's Caprices, not many violist of his time or modern time can play any of them yet they are world famous!

Apparently, Ravel could not play some of his own music that he composed.

All pieces i've written for piano I can't play except for one early piece that sounds pretty bad now.

I just re-measured my hands. RH: 22 cm, LH: 24 cm.

find it is a good practice to write what you can play or have someone go over it that can play. If you go to university, use your colleagues. Probably the one thing you can't get by learning at home.

Since your plan is to write a concerto I believe it's safe to think that any player approaching your work will be well versed in how to meet the challenges of wide intervals. OTOH, writing difficult music for the sake of difficulty is generally frowned upon. Personally, I like the sound of large intervals in the bass and use ninths and tenths a lot. If you're writing for more normal ambitions (i.e. not a concerto or virtuoso work) then in general keeping intervals to an octave or less will make your music more marketable. From personal experience I can tell you that people with small hands don't like to be reminded of the fact.

BTW, for us metrically challenged in the US it makes much more sense if you tell us the interval your hand can play. I wouldn't know 22 cm from a "big 10 inch" (record of the man that plays the blues). OK you may not get that reference. My point is that anyone in the world (on a piano forum) will understand what you mean if you say "I can play a major tenth" vs. "I can barely play an octave."

For the "metrically challenged" 22 cm = 8.661417 inches, 24 cm = 9.448819 inches.

So what interval can you reach on a piano?

Apparently a tenth, or middle C to the E an octave above that. That's massive!!

Not really. Many people can stretch a tenth, with smaller hands than the measurements Froglegs gave. I can, for one. But not all tenths are equal. I have a usable white-to-white 10th in LH, but in the RH the only usable one is a black-to-black over the gap, like Bb-Db, or Eb-Gb. Others I have to roll. What I think would suddenly reduce the playability is a string of 10ths, and the faster the tempo the more dodgy it becomes. You then have to think: who do I actually want to play this? It's not really a matter of only writing what you can play yourself, but rather writing pianistically, and if you want a performance, realistically.

Then I guess I have small hands .

Froglegs,

you don't have to worry writing for big hands. There are solutions for modern piano players to handle the problem. ---->

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bBVe0qe83V0&feature=related