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At about 45 minutes, Beethoven<\/a>\u2019s \u2018Hammerklavier\u2019 Sonata<\/a>, Op.\u00a0106 was the longest solo piano composition of its day (1818), while the longest piano concerto seems to be Busoni\u2019s five-movement monster, lasting around 73 minutes.<\/strong><\/p>\n But these fade into oblivion compared with the works of Kaikhosru Shapurji Sorabji (1892-1988) who penned more piano marathons than any other. The most famous (or notorious depending on your view) is his Opus Clavicembalisticum (around four hours). His 100 Etudes transcendantes would take seven hours to perform \u2013 nothing compared with his Symphonic Variations for Piano at an estimated, leisurely nine hours.<\/p>\n Even these are short hauls against the daunting ten hours of Frederic Rzewski\u2019s The Road<\/em> and Jacob Mashak\u2019s work for two pianos, Beatus Vir<\/em>, which clocks in at around 11 hours. If one were to include repetitive solo piano works, then even Mashak must yield to Satie\u2019s Vexations which consists of a 52-beat unbarred idea (marked \u2018Tr\u00e8s lent\u2019) played a seemingly random 840 times. A performance lasts a\u00a0little over 20 hours.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p><\/body><\/html>\n By BBC Music Magazine Published: Thursday, 08 September 2022 at 12:00 am At about 45 minutes, Beethoven\u2019s \u2018Hammerklavier\u2019 Sonata, Op.\u00a0106 was the longest solo piano composition of its day (1818), while the longest piano concerto seems to be Busoni\u2019s five-movement monster, lasting around 73 minutes. But these fade into oblivion compared with the works of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":19410,"template":"","categories":[1,17],"acf":{"readingTimeMinutes":"< 1"},"uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/37\/2022\/09\/what-is-the-longest-piece-of-piano-music-scaled.jpg",2560,1709,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/37\/2022\/09\/what-is-the-longest-piece-of-piano-music-150x150.jpg",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/37\/2022\/09\/what-is-the-longest-piece-of-piano-music-300x200.jpg",300,200,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/37\/2022\/09\/what-is-the-longest-piece-of-piano-music-768x513.jpg",768,513,true],"large":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/37\/2022\/09\/what-is-the-longest-piece-of-piano-music-1024x684.jpg",800,534,true],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/37\/2022\/09\/what-is-the-longest-piece-of-piano-music-1536x1025.jpg",1536,1025,true],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/37\/2022\/09\/what-is-the-longest-piece-of-piano-music-2048x1367.jpg",2048,1367,true]},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"importmanagerhub@sprylab.com","author_link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcmusicmagazine\/author\/importmanagerhubsprylab-com\/"},"uagb_comment_info":0,"uagb_excerpt":"By BBC Music Magazine Published: Thursday, 08 September 2022 at 12:00 am At about 45 minutes, Beethoven\u2019s \u2018Hammerklavier\u2019 Sonata, Op.\u00a0106 was the longest solo piano composition of its day (1818), while the longest piano concerto seems to be Busoni\u2019s five-movement monster, lasting around 73 minutes. But these fade into oblivion compared with the works of…","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcmusicmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rss_feed\/19409"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcmusicmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rss_feed"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcmusicmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/rss_feed"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcmusicmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcmusicmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19410"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcmusicmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19409"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcmusicmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19409"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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