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Published: Friday, 22 November 2024 at 09:30 AM
Fingers and nerves of steel: the 12 hardest pieces of music to play
Any piece of music is hard until you’ve learnt it of course. But there are some works that seem to rest outside the scope of human capability, whose hurdles give even the most experienced of musicians the willies. Here are ten of the hardest pieces of music to play.
Hardest pieces of music to play
12. Ferruccio Busoni’s Piano Concerto in C
This gargantuan work must surely be one of the most daunting piano concertos in the repertoire. And no wonder, as its composer, Ferruccio Busoni was one of the greatest pianists the world has known. At over 70 minutes, the work is more symphony than concerto, and features a full male chorus in the final movement (there are five in total). And though the solo part is fiendishly difficult, the pianist also has to perform more as an equal collaborator with the orchestra than as soloist with accompaniment. Busoni was, after all, trying to rise above showy virtuosity and create something of artistic value.
11. Tom Johnson’s Failing: A Very Difficult Piece For String Bass
Failing, a piece for solo double bass and the human voice says it all in the title – it’s so difficult to play that the performer is almost guaranteed to fail. Indeed, the piece’s monologue is all about how difficult the music is to play! And no wonder – balancing a difficult solo line and tricky monologue is no easy feat. Add to that the work’s knowing, comic element and the soloist has to be musician, actor and comedian all in one.
10. J.S Bach’s Chaconne in D minor
Violinists don’t embark lightly on learning this piece – for good reason. The articulation is difficult, the phrasing is a life’s work, and let’s not get started on the difficulty of playing the wretched thing in tune. In short, Bach’s Chaconne in D minor is booby-trapped to the hilt; few solo violin pieces contain more technical pitfalls. Its main demands, however, are musical, not least that of following a seamless melodic line through a thicket of cramp-inducing chords.
And here’s the really fun part: it gives the violinist nowhere to hide; even the tiniest blemishes are impossible to conceal. I would call it the Everest of the violin repertoire, but even Everest has its summit, whereas I’m not sure anyone can ever say that they’ve fully conquered Bach’s Chaconne in D minor.
9. Berio’s Sequenzas
I’m lumping all of Berio’s Sequenzas together, but actually each of these 14 compositions for solo instruments presents a unique cocktail of challenges. Written as a ‘love letter’ to each instrument’s technical and expressive possibilities, they demand the utmost from their performers, both in terms of stamina and technical resources. In fact, at certain points you feel as though you’re listening to an ensemble of musicians, rather than just the one.
Best known among them is probably the Sequenza III, for a virtuoso singing actress, whose list of extended techniques includes ‘teeth-chattering’, ‘tongue-trill against the upper lip,’ and ‘salvoes of laughter.’ But all 14 works are equally exhilarating and eccentric in their own way.
8. Liszt’s La Campanella
Written to mimic the tinkling of a little bell, Liszt‘s La Campanella is one of those annoying pieces that needs to sound easy, while being anything but. Its mile-long list of technical hurdles includes enormous leaps, ridiculously rapid chords, blazing chromatics, as well as a particularly nasty little technique whereby the thumb plays a melody under a sustained trill from the fourth and fifth fingers of the same hand. You could call it a pianistic bleep test; it’s certainly one of the most technically ferocious works in the piano repertoire – a fact that, I only hope, makes it all the more satisfying to master.
7. Nancarrow’s Studies for Player Piano
In a sense, these pieces don’t count as hard in the full sense of the word, given that they’re not actually intended to be played by human beings. But the reason is that no human being could play them: Nancarrow wrote them to explore rhythmic variations beyond the ability of any pianist. What emerged was a testament to his imagination: a series of 49 etudes which achieves unprecedented levels of speed, as well as textural and rhythmic complexity.
6. Von Hensel’s Piano Concerto Op. 16
The German 19th century composer Adolf von Henselt only ever wrote one Piano Concerto. But he made it count. It’s a work full of drama, that manages to unite a delicate, Chopin-esque Romanticism with an epic scale and sweep worthy of Rachmaninov. So it’s a shame, in a way, that he made it too hard for most mortals to perform. In fact, so colossal were its technical demands, so anti-idiomatic its pianistic writing that even the legendary pianist Anton Rubinstein declared that trying to learn it was ‘a waste of time, for [it] was based on an abnormal formation of the hand.’ In this respect, Rubinstein concluded, ‘Henselt, like Paganini, was a freak.’
5. Ernst’s Variations on ‘The Last Rose of Summer’
We don’t tend to hear much about the Moravian-Jewish 19th century composer Heinrich Wilhelm Ernst. But his Variations on ‘The Last Rose of Summer’ are infamous for being impossible to play. In fact, this piece, which effectively lumbers its performer with the job of two violinists, is so difficult that only a few brave souls have recorded it, among them the American violinist Hilary Hahn.
4. Paganini Caprices
Paganini, as the story goes, was someone of such dazzling virtuosity and showmanship that he would chop off three of his own violin strings mid-performance, only to amaze his audiences with an array of variations on the one remaining string. So it’s not surprising that his Caprices are notorious for pushing violinists to their limits (and often beyond).
Crammed with punishing techniques, from left hand pizzicato to blisteringly fast scales, they function not only as a training exercise, but as a kind of rite of passage: you know you can call yourself a violinist when you’ve emerged from Caprice No. 24 with your dignity intact.
Find out what we chose as the best pieces by Paganini.
3. Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring
Talking of rites, Rite of Spring is no walk in the park either. In fact, such is its rhythmic complexity that Stravinsky himself found it difficult to notate. Dancers have missed their cues trying to perform the work’s accompanying choreography (pictured). Orchestral players, meanwhile, have been driven to distraction in the attempt to stay on top of the strange syncopations. And that’s to say nothing of the sheer amount of energy and stamina you need to get through this visceral, elemental work, which famously provoked rioting at its controversial 1913 premiere.
2. Mahler’s Symphony No 8 (‘Symphony of a Thousand’)
Just putting together the vocal and orchestral forces that this work demands is enough of a feat, even before you begin to consider the difficulties of performing it. And they are pretty considerable in Mahler’s Eighth Symphony. For one thing, the choir is put under almost as much strain in Part 1 as in the finale of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. For another, it is one of the most contrapuntally ambitious works that Mahler, or for that matter, anybody, ever wrote, integrating aspects of Baroque oratorio into a symphonic landscape.
It presents the huge challenge of fusing its various, disparate styles into a unified whole for the conductor. As for the audience, they’ve got their own work cut out for them, processing something of such extreme size, complexity and volume.
Yet, for Mahler himself, it seemed to have caused remarkably few birthing pains: ‘I don’t think that I have ever worked under such a feeling of compulsion,’ said Mahler. ‘It was like a lightning vision. I saw the whole piece immediately before my eyes and only needed to write it down, as though it were being dictated to me.’ Which seems a little unfair.
01. Scriabin’s Mysterium
And finally, in top place, comes Scriabin’s unfinished orchestral evocation of the end of the world that was intended to be performed in the foothills of the Himalayas, to last for up to a week, and to finish with the end of the world and the replacement of the human race with ‘nobler beings’.
This was the composer’s vision, in his own words: ‘There will not be a single spectator. All will be participants. The work requires special people, special artists and a completely new culture. The cast of performers includes an orchestra, a large mixed choir, an instrument with visual effects, dancers, a procession, incense, and rhythmic textural articulation. The cathedral in which it will take place will not be of one single type of stone but will continually change with the atmosphere and motion of the Mysterium. This will be done with the aid of mists and lights, which will modify the architectural contours.’
Now that I come to think of it, Mahler’s Symphony of a Thousand is looking quite easy…