Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Pianist Corner The hardest piano piece ever written

LOL, but a tiny bit insulting...

Caters: Relax, try emailing the stuff you're about to post to yourself (previewing won't work with you I think) to check the validity of what you're saying

Remember that this forum, unlike most online forums is frequented by older people (I'm 36 for example)...

I don't think he cares - he just wants to argue, instead of learning.

Being a kid can be tough, you know, and issues about authority rear their ugly heads, which is what I think is happening here. Kid just can't deal with the fact that people actually know stuff and have the authoritative knowledge required to say "this is how it is".

Even if I'm an old geezer more than four times his age (I forgot if we established that he's a "he" - sorry if I got that wrong), I still remember some of that phase. Ick...in some ways, it never ends.

I don't know, wr... I used to be argumentative when I was about 10, but at 15 I had matured enough to be sure to shut up when I didn't know something. I keep doing that!

In the US, 15 seems to be the new 10 (or younger). It's really kind of weird.

On the other hand, there's this whole bizarre thing happening about treating kids as if they are somehow equivalent to much older people in their life experience. It's also really kind of weird.

I was argumentative at 10, and still at 15. And still at 64. One of the best ways to learn is to argue, especially if you argue both points of view.

Many of Caters' arguments follow a line of reasoning to its logical, absurd extreme. This is an excellent way of understanding a problem.

The discussion of dynamic range and decibels, and how what would be perceived as a change in loudness for 100 instruments playing as opposed to 10, and how that would relate to a dynamic marking was not thoroughly researched. Increasing the power output of an acoustic system by a factor of 10 does indeed increase the decibel reading by 10, so if the measured level for 10 violins was 100db, then 100 violins would measure 110 db. However, our ears don't hear the increase as 10 times louder, we would perceive the volume as about twice as loud.

So the question- Is ff twice a loud as f ? - Is fff twice as loud as ff ? Do we care, or, as in most music, do we terrace our dynamics as is Bach's music, to be perceived simply as louder or softer than the preceding section, or play from as soft as is possible to as loud as is possible as in Chopin?

FWIW, doubling the number of instruments, assuming they're all playing exactly the same, will increase the dB by 3 (measured in SPL). So if 10 violins is 100 dB, 20 violins would be 103 dB, 40 violins would be 106 dB etc.

Gawd, not another one...oh, well, my "Ignore user" button still works, should it come to that.

It would be lovely if any learning seemed to be taking place with this kid, but I haven't noticed much. For example, I indicated two ways of how the dynamics in the Ligeti piece can be correctly read, but he simply ignored them and kept hammering on with his absurd nonsense.



The dynamic indications in piano music aren't about absolute, measurable levels of volume. Anyone who has played classical music for more than a short while should know that.

Right. Everything is relative and up for interpretive judgement. To try to assign an exact decibel volume to a dynamic is as ridiculous as trying to assign an exact BPM to a tempo marking.

Yes, and despite a number of posters trying to correct his mistaken belief about the range of the double bass, he continues to harp on about the need for an extended range piano for transcriptions involving the bass.

And the need for a ridiculous amount of pianos to give a rendition of a Mozart symphony, which he insists uses notes down to 32-foot C.

You are 100% correct.

The real problem at PW are the posters who frequently write nasty, mean spirited, or arrogant posts. Or the posters that use PW for endless back and forth arguments about the most trivial matters possible.

So incredibly obnoxious and mean spirited.

The Forum Policeman is on the scene.

You are right of course, but all the same I am going to look down on any performance that doesn't end with at least two broken piano strings.

What if I break all the strings? Do I get a prize?

Hamelin's Circus Gallop!
But the most difficult posisble pieces probably would be Busoni's piano concerto and one of Prokofiev's.... probably his second.
Some people say Rach 3, Tchaikovsky 1 or Brahms 2 but I disagree...
I find the most difficult pieces to play are ones that you don't enjoy.

You win my utmost praise and respect for any song where you accomplish that.

I've heard opus clavicembalisticum can be quite difficult if you've not warmed up properly. Finnissy's English Country Tunes is also quite tricky, so I've heard, and his The History of Photography in Sound has a couple of spots of bother. Frankly, um, a lot more difficult than anything I've discovered of the composers thus far mentioned...Ligeti's etudes can be made harder by increasing the tempo
Xxx