Most challenging piece

[chopithoven]

Which is Beethoven's most challenging piece for the piano technically?

[this is Nuh]

Sonata No.29, Op. 106 (Sonate fur das Hammerclavier)

[spaceray]

Originally posted by this is Nuh:
Sonata No.29, Op. 106 (Sonate fur das Hammerclavier)

What makes this piece especially technically difficult?

[chopithoven]

Originally posted by spaceray:
What makes this piece especially technically difficult?

Yes, good question. I have always known that the Hammerklavier is complictaed because it's very long and extenuating, but not because of being specially complicated technically.

[Chris]

Hammerklavier... first jump... in... left hand... nightmares...

[This message has been edited by Chris (edited December 08, 2002).]

[chopithoven]

Originally posted by Chris:
Hammerklavier... first jump... in... left hand... nightmares...

[This message has been edited by Chris (edited December 08, 2002).]

Are you referring to the first movement's triumphal subject in the very start?

[Chris]

Yes. I get it maybe 30% of the time. Not that I've really killed myself working on that piece yet - I'm nowhere near ready to tackle that bad boy.

[Peter]

Originally posted by chopithoven:
Yes, good question. I have always known that the Hammerklavier is complictaed because it's very long and extenuating, but not because of being specially complicated technically.

It is the last movement in particular that is technically very difficult. The point also is that the musical demands of all the late sonatas are so great that it takes someone of great ability and artistic maturity to play them convincingly.

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'Man know thyself'

[Chaszz]

Originally posted by Peter:
It is the last movement in particular that is technically very difficult. The point also is that the musical demands of all the late sonatas are so great that it takes someone of great ability and artistic maturity to play them convincingly.

How do you paintists find the third movement of the Moonlight Sonata? It has always seemed a miracle to me that anyone could play it.

[Chaszz]

Originally posted by Chaszz:
How do you paintists find the third movement of the Moonlight Sonata? It has always seemed a miracle to me that anyone could play it.

Sorry - I meant 'pianists'.

[Sorrano]

Originally posted by Peter:
It is the last movement in particular that is technically very difficult. The point also is that the musical demands of all the late sonatas are so great that it takes someone of great ability and artistic maturity to play them convincingly.

Although I don't consider it particularly difficult technically (compared to the final sonatas) I find the Appassionata simply wears me out with the tremendous emotional outpouring. If I had the technical skills to play it I don't think I would be up to it emotionally to finish it.

[dice45]

All,
*** careful, non-pianist , layman speaking *** (i wanted to see what the experts say before i make a complete fool out of me ...
well, back in school, i saw the notes and schollmates and the music teacher (who was quite competetent on the piano) showed me the starting chords which are a mere challenge to merely hit the keys properly, not ot speak of hitting each key with differnt strenght in order to voice/shade the chord to the artists will.
And i faintly remember, these starting chords are duodecimes.
One schoolmate who was able to play the Moonlight's 3rd mvmnt in a not only flawless but really convincing way said that op.106 is too high a challenge for him technically .

Ok, from my own listening experience, countless listings with numerous pianists (i adored the sonata without being able to understand it of a longlong time), i must say that the whole sonata op.106 is a field of land mines. Any mvmnt has so many ticklish corners and crossings and if the artist takes the wrong turn he messes the mvmnt up in an unrecoverable way.
If played right, the starting chords of the 1st mvmnt have a shattering, wrecking-ball-like impact. But this impact does **not** come from playing it loud.
From the 1st chord there are 10000 Volts around and this voltage should not break down during the whole mvmnt. Lucid phrasing and stressing the right chords (not the obvious ones, avoid the traps) is important, otherwise the rhtythm collapses soon, also the triller passages must be tackled right, else rhtythm collapses.
The short 2nd mvmnt is somewhat of link between 1st and the entity of 3rd and 4th mvmnt. 1st it is a consequent continuing of what hapens in the 1st mvmnt, but suddenly you find your self in an enourmous hall with arced corridors and stairs at the periphery and a window now and then letting you look in the huge space in the center.

Concerning artistic maturity and insight, i would see 3rd and 4th mvmnt as equally challenging. In 3rd mvmnt is not happing much (except if major goofs happen, that's spectacular then :-) ), it's slow, unspectacular, just mood and it is very easy to make happen that sort of boredom what critics call "lengthes" in (bad) epic movies and what is happening in almost every Wagner opera.

The 4th mvmnt is a fugue and, i fully agree with you, Peter, it's technically difficult, i know from listening that many pianists just survive technically and are miles away from giving the lump of clay a shape. And few of those who master it technically are able to penetrate this fugue mentally and are able to make it sound as one piece, as musically plausible and lucid .. and differntiated.
With most pianists, it's like listening to less-or-more skilled wood chopping, sorry for the rude comparison.

I have raved about Solomon elsewhere. I think i rave about Arthur Schnabel :-)
He is a rare exception, he obvioulsy does not master it technically but does not permit to get intimidated by this, his enormous Gestaltwille (German intranslatable for: shaping will, shaping spirit, idea how to artistically arrive at an intended goal) is so dominant over his limited manual abilities that he makes it sound very detailed and convincing and he is one of the few not messing up the sudden silence and the utterly sweet and intimate mood of the short calm sequence commented "sempre dolce cantabile" in the notes. If just all pianists would read this!!
Arthur Schnabel has one ability unequalled IMO: his toning of tone colours in chords, his voicing in chords, his ability to let the right note grow out of a chord, let the note sustain a bit longer while the rest of the chord decays. This ability is of vital importance in Beethoven's late sonatas.

3rd and 4th are entity IMO and TME. In Schnabel's and Solomon's performance, the border between 3rd and 4th mvmnt is impossible to find. I once wanted to find the beginning of the 4th mvmnt to mark it on my minidisc and i had to get some other, inferior performance to find the note sequence to be marked. Of course, for someone able to read notes, no problem, but i never learned to read notes properly

Bottom line: Get the impact and tension of 1st mvmnt right, find the huge space of the 2nd, prevent 3rd from showing lenghtes and getting boring, get 3rd and 4th seamlessly merge, master and mentally penetrate 4th, get the "sempre dolce cantibile" sequence sing, find back into the fugue and you have it. Easy. ...

**off-topic**
Gestaltwille & Vivaldi 4 Seasons:
4 seasons is trivial, boring, redundand, deja vu, right? wrong.
Recently I heard a young guy play Vivaldi's 4 Seasons, J.S.Bach's Passacaglia BWV582 and some other baroque works on a sort of button accordion i had never seen before. He was not mastering the instrument perfectly, OTOH the difficulty of chosen works was considerable, particular the 4 seasons played on one instrument.
He however had this Gestaltwille, he did not permit to be impeded by his limited manual ability, he played those works so wonderful, so gorgeous, so right. I came there, wet and cold and depressed ... i listened to his full program 2 times and i left with eyes sparkling and face radiant, having done what i never did before: i bought a CD from a street musician.
His 4 seasons were on par with both my favourite performances. And his Passacaglia, well, just right, wonderful. And the Passacaglia is about as easy to mess up as the Ciaconna and LvB's op.106

In this respect a recent quote from Andreas quote thread comes to mind where Beethoven advised Cerny how to train his nephew. As soon as a techncal minimum requirements are met, never correct his error, let him artistically evolve and never interfer with that, point the minor technical errors out after he ended. That's right, that's what Artur Schnabel and this young street musician must have done: early gain confidence in the own artistic ability and early gain maturity by this -- and Gestaltwille -- and technique, well, necessary nuisance.

Some simply have the gift understanding the music and ability to put that to sound, others have the manual ability to play Chopin Etudes at age 8 or 10, few, very few have both. BTW, none of those without manual perfection would win a contest nowadays, even enter the last round, no matter how deep his understanding of the music is :-(. I have attended the ARD annual music contest quite often, i can tell, and young musicians confirmed this is as bad if not worse on other contests. Then there they are out on the stage, those who have all manual perfection possible, playing op.106 or Bach's Ciaconna to pieces. And win the contest.

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Greets,
Bernhard

[This message has been edited by dice45 (edited December 09, 2002).]

[Joy]

Originally posted by Sorrano:

Although I don't consider it particularly difficult technically (compared to the final sonatas) I find the Appassionata simply wears me out with the tremendous emotional outpouring. If I had the technical skills to play it I don't think I would be up to it emotionally to finish it.

This is true. When I saw it performed on stage last year the pianist, at the very end, threw up his arms and you could hear him exclaim 'whew'! He played it brillantly, I might add, although he did have some sweat on the brow. I think it's not only a very emotional piece to play but also very physical.

[Peter]

Originally posted by Chaszz:
How do you paintists find the third movement of the Moonlight Sonata? It has always seemed a miracle to me that anyone could play it.

What is required is good arpeggio work which entails proper balance on each note and picking up of the fingers so they don't get left behind (particularly the thumb as this causes much stiffness)! So many teachers haven't a clue how to teach arpeggios properly which is why so many otherwise musical pupils fail when they come to something like this.

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'Man know thyself'

[spaceray]

Originally posted by Joy:
This is true. When I saw it performed on stage last year the pianist, at the very end, threw up his arms and you could hear him exclaim 'whew'! He played it brillantly, I might add, although he did have some sweat on the brow. I think it's not only a very emotional piece to play but also very physical.

Do you remember the pianists name?