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I've somehow managed to learn and perform some pretty heavy-duty pieces, from the Hammerklavier Sonata to Alkan's Grande Sonate and numerous etudes, as well as Godowsky-Chopin etudes, Ligeti etudes, and Liszt's Transcendental etudes.
But the hardest one for me to learn wasn't especially technically difficult; it was rhythmically extremely complex: Nimrod Borenstein, whose music has been championed by Vladimir Ashkenazi for instance, was kind enough to write an etude for me. It's a study in polyrhythms that change bar by bar, and quite unlike Ligeti's already incredibly complex polyrhythms (Désordre, Automne à Varsovie) in which there is at least a common denominator, almost none of the rhythms actually line up. It involves multiple polyrhythms in each hand simultaneously, for instance counting odd groups of 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 and/or 7 all at once, such as sextuplets with 2+3 16th note pattern in 3/4 in the right hand against quintuplets with 3+2 16ths in the left.
Joe Crabtree's app Polynome helped me to work out some polyrhythms that I don't think it's possible to count otherwise, unless somebody out there has a built-in atomic clock.
Like all complex music, the task is to make it sound logical and natural, so if I did my job it should hopefully just sound musical. I nicknamed it the "Brain Damage Etude"! It's really a beautiful piece.
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In the "had to learn" category, I was taking various classes at the Longy School in Cambridge, MA. One the professors mentioned to me that there was a juried recital scheduled for some months later and she suggested that a young flutist, who was a student at Longy, and I would be a good match. She further suggested that we do the Prokofiev Flute Sonata. Asked if I was willing, I said "yes". Then I looked at the score. Wrong order :-)
But I was committed. As an amateur pianist with a busy life in other areas, I don't think I've ever worked as hard or well on learning a piece as I did with the Prokofiev. And to my surprise, diligent practice really works! Difficulties that I didn't think I could overcome eventually disappeared. With excellent coaching from the late Yves Chardon (a former cellist in the Boston Symphony and assistant conductor of the Philadelphia Orchestra) and the utterly amazing John Heiss of the New England Conservatory, we passed the audition by the jury and played the concert. I have a recording of the performance. It's pretty much note-perfect, despite my being nervous about certain passages, such as the very end of the Scherzo.
A lesson to me was not to underestimate the power of good, hard work. The other lesson was that the antidote for stage fright, which we all experience to some degree or another, is preparation.
An interesting coda: a year or so after the recital, the flutist and I got together to play the Prokofiev again for old times' sake. I did not look at the piece before this session, assuming I knew it so well that further practice was not necessary. Wrong! My playing was very far from note-perfect and pretty awful. Practice!
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Jeux d'eau by Ravel - it's the piece I'm working on now and it is definitely the most difficult I've tackled. The first challenge was just to learn the notes. I consider myself a decent sight reader, but hadn't played Ravel before. There were sections where I was scratching my head, REALLY struggling to figure out what I was even supposed to be doing. I listened to a lot of recordings, took small sections at a time (sometimes just a couple measures a day) and gradually learned it all. The biggest challenge of course is getting the right sound. Still working on that! Learning this piece, I really paid attention to what fingerings and motions would allow me to play at speed with the quality of sound I want, right from the start. Sounds obvious, but I always tend to focus first on just learning the notes. Recording myself and listening back has been hugely helpful. Until I did this I didn't even realize I was emphasizing some notes unintentionally. So, still a work in progress, but I feel like learning this piece has pushed my playing to a new level!
I wanted to call out Inna Faliks' livestream on Gaspard de la Nuit as an excellent resource with great advice which I tried to put to use on Jeux d'eau. Also found her demonstrations of fast passages at very slow speed extremely helpful - would love to see more of that in lessons!
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Sometimes it’s all about ingoing expectations. The most daunting experience is when pieces don’t SOUND terribly hard but are actually quite hard to learn or master. The opposite is the best case scenario — pieces that sound hard but are relatively easy to learn! Good ROI on time spent!
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Amateur here. Chopin Ballade 4 was challenging.
Both the coda, and even harder is the beginning few measures that appears to be so simple. The beginning section as one long musical line and yet remain quiet and ethereal, voiced using the pinky seems to more difficult than it appears. Perhaps it's a small hands issue.
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Lc Congrats on learning the 4th Ballade! That’s an incredible achievement for anyone, let alone an amateur. As a professional, I think I’ve had to work even more on the opening than the famously treacherous coda. Finding the Goldilocks zone where everything is “just right” in the opening is an immense challenge. Ideally there should be goosebumps after the very first phrase! I think I’ll work for the rest of my life on this phrase.
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Albert thanks Albert. Good to hear i am not alone in finding the beginning of 4th ballade infinitely challenging yet mesmerizing. I still try to keep that up from time to time. And yes, i see myself working on that phrase till my last days. On days with the right breathing, it seems like everything just clicks..and yet next moment, the magic is gone when my overstretched hands get tired.
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Lc I often use this phrase as an example whenever my students think only they have to work hard to play beautifully. There seems to be an especially narrow zone for this phrase to sound natural and inspired. The slightest deviation risks sounding contrived. It’s hard!
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Lc the beginning of Op. 52 truly is one of the most mysteriously challenging passages in all of piano literature. Joachim Kaiser, probably Germany's foremost classical music critic in the second half of the 20th century, once wrote after a recital by Halina Czerny-Stefańska (co-winner of the 1949 International Chopin Competition, after all): "The unending opening melody of the 4th ballade broke apart under her hands." Almost everyone struggles with those thirty bars, even the greatest ones. Roberto Cotroneo wrote an entire novel about a pianist (with strong resemblances to Michelangeli), his wrestling with the 4th ballade and the encounters with its manuscript. That piece has always had a special mystical aura around it, and deservedly so.
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Alexander Weymann Haha. "broke apart in her hands". How funny. I always try to think of serene winter lake that look like it has thin ice, and out appears magical creatures. (Though honestly, most days it's muddy water and evil creatures that I manage to conjure from my hands). LOL.
That's for sharing that fun story and about the book. I wish Roberto's book is in translated in English. I read the plot on wikipedia and it seems really interesting. Link for others if they're curious. (https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presto_con_fuoco)
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Lc I love that! I think I'll keep that image in mind and will in the future strive toward the serene winter lake with thin, shiny ice and magical creatures, and try to avoid the muddy water with its evil creatures in my practicing and my playing. ;-)
Yes, it doesn't seem like the book was ever translated into English - a shame, really. I read it in German ("Die verlorene Partitur") - a gift from a pianist friend, of course. :-)
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When I was in high school I made a promise to myself that I would learn and play Fantasie Impromptu before I graduated, and I had the opportunity to do just that at a competition in my Senior year.
One of the first things I did was cut out many extra-curricular activities that I realized were sources of stress rather than joy in my life. That left me with a lot more time to practice than I would have had otherwise. Then I started to practice very slowly with each hand separately. I found this part quite discouraging because I felt like I was making no progress, but I kept going over and over and over again with almost no gain in tempo. But then, to my great surprise, I started to pick up speed very quickly. It really taught me to appreciate the value of practicing slowly, because I learned that those weeks of practicing at 60 bpm really were worth something. My brain was taking its time to absorb the melody, and once it could grasp it, I was really able to take off.
The hardest part was trying to put the two hands together. There isn't really an easy way to play the 16th notes over the triplets at a low speed, so I waited until I was very comfortable playing both parts together fast and separately, and then layered them on top of each other. I don't think I have ever learned any other piece that way, but it worked in this case.
After that, it was just a lot of practice to work out the kinks. When the time for the competition came, I received the top available rating, and although I know my performance was immature (I never truly master the piece) it is an achievement I still cherish, and I hope I can channel that same dedication to my practice today.
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Steven Hart that's a really great and helpful description of your problems encountered in learning this piece, your strategies used to overcome them, and the process of how it all came together in the end. Thanks for sharing!
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