Top 10 Hardest Piano Pieces by Brahms

In honor of Brahms’ birthday, here are his 10 hardest works for piano! Next to Schumann, Brahms is perhaps the most “subtly difficult” of the major composers for piano. Approaching technical difficulty as a necessity of the soundscape rather than a virtuosic display, his music contains difficulties that are not immediately apparent to the listener, unlike the music of composers such as Liszt or Chopin. Brahms’ difficulties can be divided into three broad categories, all of which must be mastered in order to become proficient with his style of writing. 1. Double notes: Brahms often utilized double notes in order to increase the harmonic density of his texture. One must be able to play rapid octaves, 6ths, 4ths, and 3rds like it is a second language. This physically painful aspect of Brahms prevents all but the most mechanically gifted performers from playing his major works. 2. Leaping intervals: The intervals and arpeggios seen in Brahms’ writing often contain large and ungainly intervals, often stretching an octave or more. The left hand bears the brunt of many such leaps, and the risk of encountering wrong notes is high. 3. Symphonic textures: Unlike his idol Schumann, Brahms was all about being big. This is a musical problem as much as it is a technical one. The massive, symphonic textures (large chords, octaves, huge ideas) are not written pianistically; each note of these large textures was imagined as an entire section of an orchestra. The piano as an instrument cannot possibly recreate the dense and rich sound of a symphony, especially without becoming strident or bombastic. This means that the pianist must find a fine balance between vastness of sound and the harsh attack on the keyboard (which isn’t nearly as much of a problem for strings or winds). All three of these issues (especially 3) is why some of Brahms’ large-scale piano works are often admired from afar, with musicians acknowledging the powerful emotional and harmonic content while also seeing the writing as problematic. The piano masters who have embraced the struggle of playing Brahms face both idiosyncratic punishments and rich rewards. 10. Piano Sonata No.2, Op.2 (7 ) 0:00 Jonathan Plowright 0:49 Jorge Federico Osorio 1:14 Sviatoslav Richter 1:45 Julius Katchen 9. Variations on a Theme of Schumann, Op.9 (7 ) 2:39 Maria Grinberg 3:14 Peter Rösel 4:00 Louise Lortie 4:29 Julius Katchen 5:15 Gabriele Carcano 8. Klavierstucke, (7 ) 5:50 Béla Bartók 6:24 Murray Perahia 6:54 Anna Vinnitskaya 7:56 Nicholas Angelich 7. 5 Studies, No.1, (7 ) 8:31 Georg Friedrich Schenck 6. Piano Sonata No.1, Op.1 (8) 9:18 Peter Rösel 10:10 Elisso Virsaladze 10:45 Lukas Geniušas 5. Piano Concerto No.1, (8) 11:41 Radu Lupu 12:23 Alfred Brendel 13:11 Rudolf Serkin 4. Piano Sonata No.3, Op.5 (8) 14:07 Artur Rubinstein 14:35 André Laplante 15:31 Antti Siirala 15:58 Jon Nakamatsu 3. Variations on a Theme by Handel, (8 ) 16:55 Leon McCawley 17:29 Benno Moiseiwitsch 17:55 Solomon 18:26 Claudio Arrau 18:47 Murray Perahia 2. Piano Concerto No.2, (8 ) 20:17 Nelson Freire 21:04 Emil Gilels 21:38 Ivan Moravec 22:24 Rudolf Serkin 22:40 Krystian Zimerman 23:05 Wilhelm Backhaus 1. Variations on a Theme of Paganini, (8 ) 23:39 Cécile Ousset 24:05 Agustin Anievas 24:34 Abbey Simon 25:10 Agustin Anievas 25:58 Evgeny Kissin 26:27 Abbey Simon 26:57 Minoru Nojima 27:45 Evgeny Kissin Honorable mentions: The other 5 Studies, Hungarian Dances, Variations on an Original Theme , Variations on a Hungarian Song, Fantasies , Klavierstucke , Klavierstücke **PATREON LINK** a guy’s gotta sleep somewhere