Hardest piece you know?

3 pieces, all for clarinet.

first, flight of the bumblebee. good lord. it's hard enough, but add in the fact that you have to breathe on a wind instrument, and it gets a hell of a lot harder.

second, Etude number 32 from C Rose's "32 etudes for the clarinet". this is crazy. again, you have a hard time breathing in this one. it has double octave jumps in the space of a 16th note. it uses almost exclusively 16th notes, and it is supposed to go at 140, if not faster. also, it is in Db Major.

finally, the grand daddy, in my mind, another of C. Rose's stuff, out of his book "40 studies for the clarinet", study number 20. it goes at 104, and it has 16th notes,trills, extremely high notes, followed by extremly low notes, and finally, for a good chunk of the piece, SYNCOPATED 32NDS. probably the most technically and rhythmically challenging piece I have ever played.

*cough*Bartok Contrasts*cough*

Flight of The Bumble Bee for trumpet.

I think that Flight of The Bumble Bee is the holy grail (or at least Damn hard) for any wind instrument that requires a person to breathe.

i just slur the whole thing

if you didn't, then you don't get paid nearly enough. you aren't even supposed to tongue it, are you? I thought it was supposed to be slurred? although, I've never actually seen the original music, so it may have been adapted with time.

Rachmaninov Etude Op 39 No 6 A Minor

The Berio sequenzas... if you mean to play exactly what's written... are damn near impossible

Try playing what's written? Pshaw! who would do that?

The sequenzas that I've looked at (viola, piano, oboe) aren't THAT insane once you take them apart.

Faerie's Aire and Death Waltz by John Stump.

It's meant to be impossible and if you look closely it's really funny.

The Cantabile Singers - Faerie’s Aire and Death Waltz

I don't find many pieces difficult but I always try to finish them perfectly. Currently I'm working on Lefevre's second sonata for Clarinet and Piano. Grade V I know but I've only been playing for two years:)

chopin's first ballade, im started backwards, from the coda!

Carmen Fantasy by Borne for flute is quite hard, but it's mostly just a load of either chromatic runs or general scales. And a little bit of double tonguing here and there. For piano I think that L'alouette (lark) by Glinka is pretty amazing, and I hope to get to that level one day, though it looks ever so slightly impossible for someone with small hands!! Lastly, for violin I would say that one of the most difficult pieces could be Carmen Fantasy (again, I know!) by Sarasate, or maybe any of the virtuoso repertoire actually - after all, many of the great composers were virtuoso violinists themselves. Anyway, sorry about the longest post ever!!!

The hardest piece I've been able to play reasonably well on the horn probably was the third movement of Schoeck's horn concerto. The hardest piece I've attempted to play but failed horribly was Ligeti's Trio for violin, horn and piano. Fast, uncomfortable runs, high notes (lots of D's, at least one Eb) and often staying on such a high note for quite a while (in pianissimo). :( It's a great piece though.

I've never played something really hard on the piano. Although it's my main instrument, my technique sucks. Luckily there's plenty of piano music that's beautiful and not too hard.

As for general hardness, some of the most frightening ones I've seen were from Ferneyhough (naturally), Stockhausen, and Xenakis (nomos alpha for cello solo).

The hardest piece I've ever seen was an alto saxophone solo by Dezinouv. It's changing between strange key signatures every measure, and has absolutely no feel to it. It's completely random, and I think the second movement requires you to play multiple notes at once. I attempted to sight read it a couple times, and struggled immensely. It would probably be a waste of time to learn it, and it would be another project to play it with an accompionist.

Any other saxophone players hear heard of it or seen it?

Gaspard de la Nuit - Ravel

Islamey - Balakirev

Suite Iberia (particularly Triana) - Alb

Jingle Bells.

19char

not suprised:whistling:

;)

Bach's Chaconne for solo violin must be the most difficult piece to play that I know of,

besides all the double stops and physical demands (it lasts 14 minutes),

It is in my opinion the best piece of written music,

so to master its overall beauty and power takes hours and hours of practice....

Its a piece that I seldomly attempt to play, just glimpse at it now and then

Heh, I was kidding. I find Moonlight sonata pretty hard for me (2nd year guitar).

Those barred chords are hard! (did i spell that right?)

Xenakis' "Evryali" for solo piano. Some parts of it are unplayable, and when a pianist asked Xenakis what he's supposed to do, Xenakis answered that he must decide which of the notes which can't be played are less important than the others and ignore them.

Other difficult piano pieces are Boulez's "Structures" for two pianos and his piano sonatas (notably his 2nd and 3rd) and Stockhausen's "Klaviestucke" (notably, the first movement is to be played "as fast as the player can play it").

Concerning more "conventional" repertoire, I'd say Balakirev's Islamey or some of the Godowsky's arrangements of Chopin's etudes. He did crazy things, such as taking the right hand of two etudes and assigning them to the left and right hand respectively (must be really difficult to play..).

Of course, I don't know how to play all these pieces, but I do know them :P So, in case you were wondering what's the most difficult piece I can play, I'd say the first movement from Beethoven's Piano Sonata No.15, but then again I am not a pianist :P

Liszt's Rhapsody #2, but really bad.

Its not too bad, but in some areas, but its the second clarinet's enemy. O_o...

The Marching Band Show, Music of the Day by Key Polan (SP?!?!?). Add a few measures of 16th note runs at 180... and moving... If the fingerings were easier, it wouldn't be too bad, but I had complete hand shifts and things for it. The first part's fingerings were easier, but the notes were harder to play...

When I used to play clarinet in concert band at my previous high school, we played a piece, I don't remember the name, but it had something to do with American this or that. Amercian Faces, or something like that maybe. It had some combination 32nd and 64th notes runs in D major crossing the break and going up as far as high F# above the staff as far as I remember. They were just rips, not really in time, but ending on the right beat while still getting all the notes in was DEAD hard. And it was so fast, that if you weren't fast enough at the break, all the rest of the notes would just be that ever familiar SQUEEEEEK, so you had to be extra careful that didn't happen. My clarinet didn't have the best sealing pads, either, so it was quite a challenge.

Anybody know any challenging pieces for horn and trumpet that I could try out? I don't own any trumpet-specific music, but on horn I can play the Mozart concertos, the first Strauss concerto, and most of Morceau de Concert, an arrangement of a Saint-Saens violin concert piece. Unfortunately, that's the only horn-specific music I have. Since I don't have any horn exercises, I've been playing violin

I don't know if anyone's mentioned this, but:

The Ligeti Etudes. Especially The Devil's Staircase. They're fine when you have two people playing the piano - well, most of them - but for one, it's HORRIBLE.

You mentioned them yourself, on the second page. :P

Amercian Faces, or something like...

American feces? Having a profound knowledge of american culture (there is no such thing), I'd say that my guess is a better one. :toothygrin:

Letehn, somehow I feel a strong urge to not disagree with you. :dry: