Hardest Music to Play
We have been having various discussions here at ConferenceR7 recently on which are the hardest songs/pieces to play in the world. It’s a tough question which has taken us on quite a journey but here are our findings. The first thing we asked is “which is the hardest instrument to play”? We decided that it was between the piano and violin, we will go into more detail on this in the future (I promise) but anyway, in the end we went for the piano.
Hardest Music to Play on Piano:Chopin’s Etudes
Split into three sets of solo studies, the Etudes by Chopin are considered by some to be the most difficult pieces to play on the piano. They require tremendous dexterity in both hands and a level of independence that borders on the insane. Notable performances of these studies at break-neck speeds have been recorded by the likes of Chinese prodigy Lang Lang and Russian phenomenon Evgeny Kissin. Below is a fairly low quality copy of the original score my Mr Chopin and although not particularly sharp you can already get a feel for the amount of tireless work that must going in to learning and perfecting a piece on this scale.
Prokofiev Piano Concerto #2
The Russian composer Prokofiev wrote his second piano concerto in 1913 to mark the suicide of one of his closes friends from the St. Petersburg Conservatory. The concerto is wild and temperamental, at it’s premier Prokofiev himself played the solo piano part and was received with great applause and ovation. Some people say that the Russians play this piece best but I tend to think that the Haracio Guitierez version takes some beating. This composition is fiendishly difficult and any pianist who take it on will have literally years of preparation to do before the perform it. Below you will find a score for the introduction (click image for larger version). You will already notice that the piano part is pretty ridiculous and in my opinion this is one of the hardest pieces ever written for piano.
Hardest Genre of Music to Play
Well, this has got to be a toss-up between Jazz and Classical music. Firstly, being a classical musician takes absolutely years of hard work and dedication. Most successful musicians start at a very young age and already practising hard by the age of 10. Then it’s off to Music College for a four year degree and then possibly a Masters followed by a few years of playing with small county orchestras. Maybe after all that you might get a job on the back row of an orchestra where it will take you about 20 years to work your way forward to any sort of decent position. All in all it’s a pretty tough job and then you have to consider the music that they actually play. As you can see from the piano examples above, classical music is really hard to play and it’s a bit like mathematics, there is so much history and culture that there is a right and wrong way to play practically every composition.
In my opinion, jazz and classical music is very similar in terms of difficulty. The question here is whether it is harder to have to practise something and perfect it or whether it is harder to have to make up everything on the spot and still make it sound amazing. I’m not really sure what the answer is but I tend to think that improvising something great every night, on every record, is truly inspiring. Therefore, I suppose what I am saying is that I think Jazz is the hardest genre of music to play.
We have been having various discussions here at ConferenceR7 recently on which are the hardest songs/pieces to play in the world. It’s a tough question which has taken us on quite a journey but here are our findings. The first thing we asked is “which is the hardest instrument to play”? We decided that it was between the piano and violin, we will go into more detail on this in the future (I promise) but anyway, in the end we went for the piano.
Hardest Music to Play on Piano:Chopin’s Etudes
Split into three sets of solo studies, the Etudes by Chopin are considered by some to be the most difficult pieces to play on the piano. They require tremendous dexterity in both hands and a level of independence that borders on the insane. Notable performances of these studies at break-neck speeds have been recorded by the likes of Chinese prodigy Lang Lang and Russian phenomenon Evgeny Kissin. Below is a fairly low quality copy of the original score my Mr Chopin and although not particularly sharp you can already get a feel for the amount of tireless work that must going in to learning and perfecting a piece on this scale.
Prokofiev Piano Concerto #2
The Russian composer Prokofiev wrote his second piano concerto in 1913 to mark the suicide of one of his closes friends from the St. Petersburg Conservatory. The concerto is wild and temperamental, at it’s premier Prokofiev himself played the solo piano part and was received with great applause and ovation. Some people say that the Russians play this piece best but I tend to think that the Haracio Guitierez version takes some beating. This composition is fiendishly difficult and any pianist who take it on will have literally years of preparation to do before the perform it. Below you will find a score for the introduction (click image for larger version). You will already notice that the piano part is pretty ridiculous and in my opinion this is one of the hardest pieces ever written for piano.
Hardest Genre of Music to Play
Well, this has got to be a toss-up between Jazz and Classical music. Firstly, being a classical musician takes absolutely years of hard work and dedication. Most successful musicians start at a very young age and already practising hard by the age of 10. Then it’s off to Music College for a four year degree and then possibly a Masters followed by a few years of playing with small county orchestras. Maybe after all that you might get a job on the back row of an orchestra where it will take you about 20 years to work your way forward to any sort of decent position. All in all it’s a pretty tough job and then you have to consider the music that they actually play. As you can see from the piano examples above, classical music is really hard to play and it’s a bit like mathematics, there is so much history and culture that there is a right and wrong way to play practically every composition.
In my opinion, jazz and classical music is very similar in terms of difficulty. The question here is whether it is harder to have to practise something and perfect it or whether it is harder to have to make up everything on the spot and still make it sound amazing. I’m not really sure what the answer is but I tend to think that improvising something great every night, on every record, is truly inspiring. Therefore, I suppose what I am saying is that I think Jazz is the hardest genre of music to play.