Are these composers HARDER or EASIER to play than they sound?

Tier list time! We're going to be going through famous, major classical piano composers and talking about whether their music is easier than we expect after seeing it, or harder. Some composers tend to write music that fits the hands really well yet still sound flashy, while others write music that is just challenging to get.

#piano #classicalmusic #howtoplaypiano #classicalpiano #

[waygoblue]

OK...My personal experience with Chopin: You never can take him for granted concerning what he's going to put in the score. He keeps me on my toes. Just because you go up the keyboard with certain notes does not mean you'll descend with the same notes. And, just because the last broken chord or a two (or more) has certain notes does not mean the next chord will. And, really, that's what I like about him.

[Yubin_Lee_Doramelin]

Hmm... I recommend you to do this again, but not just mere composers, rather accompanying "specific works", such as... Chopin's "Allegro de Concert", which is infamous for being the hardest piano solo piece by him, or Debussy's Études or Préludes which are PRETTY hard.

[pedroganme]

Although I agree with a lot that was said, I disagree with Chopin's rating, in fact, I would rate him on the "Way harder than it sounds". I think it strongly fits in this category coming from the perspective of musicians, not a lot of things sound very technically demanding, but boy they are. Chopin's writing has a lot of details and it needs many levels of texture to sound good, and I personally find these details technically very very hard to execute properly.

[Tolstoy]

Chopin isn't typically easier than the music sounds. Liszt maybe? His music fits the hand much better than Chopin's.

[moy]

Thanks Ryan, well explained about these composers, Bach is my most favorite composer.

[JoeRichter]

Fun discussion! Great content as usual. Thank you!

[FizSwik]

Great list! Keep it up you are really talented!

[MyAnno]

I disagree with Liszt. There are so many of his pieces, for example most of the Lieder transcriptions, that sound easy but are almost unplayable. He should be in the middle category

[ethanhopper]

Schubert for me is at the very top of the list. His sonatas especially are monstrously difficult. One thing he frequently does that makes them so hard is dotted rhythms with big chords/octaves, you're expected to voice a melody in a 3-4 note chord that's constantly shifting positions and in dotted rhythm. So much harder than it sounds!

[infinityx]

hey ryan could you one day rank the chopin etudes op 25 set preferably if you had to do only one based on musicality

[trezz]

it's criminal how underrated you are

[fredericko]

I enjoy your classical piano videos…they are entertaining. I don’t agree, however, on these difficulty rankings. All of these composers wrote difficult pieces which are even more difficult to perform at a high level…particularly Chopin and Liszt. But if you are able to navigate through their etudes and conclude they only sound difficult but are easy to pull off, then that’s remarkable.

[TenorCantusFirmus]

Dvořák? His piano concerto i.e. is infamous for being very taxing to play, but not very flashy.

[AltoonaYourPiano]

Excellent tier list, I mostly agree with you. I remember when Vinheteiro made a "10 levels of piano" and all the non-pianists thought the jump from Level 8 (Bach's second fugue from Well-Tempered Claviar) to Level 9 (Chopin's Revolutionary Etude) was a massive jump or in some cases that Clementi's Sonatina in C Major (the Level 3 piece) sounded more challenging. Me and the other pianists laughed when seeing those comments. We knew they were tricked by the first impressions of the pieces and that Clementi's Sonatina in C is a piece of cake, the Bach fugue is a real beast, and personally I think the Bach fugue listed as Level 8 (second fugue from Well-Tempered Claviar) is harder than the Revolutionary Etude. I personally see Beethoven as leaning towards "harder than it sounds" but I can see why you chose "middle", my reason for putting Beethoven on the borderline between the two categories is some pieces, such as the first movement of the Moonlight Sonata have a giant gap between playing the piece and performing the piece properly.

[VasilBelezhkov]

It really depends on many facts. For example my primary instrument is NOT the piano so your 'easy' is not like my 'easy'. There are some very easy and some very hard compositions by the very same person - for example I played many years ago both the PRELUDE and the FUGUE (no.1 in C major, from the 1st book 'Well tempered you-know-what by you-know-who') and the technical difference is from Earth to Heaven.

[WielkiKaleson]

Let me rephrase the last section. If time spent learning a piece = MONEY and you want to impress listeners (be honest, it always has some VALUE), than guys at the bottom of the list created music that is better value for money.

[arryaxx]

Mozart players are also to blame for making him sound easier than he is. Bunch of crazy people determined to make all those notes seem casual. Heck with that, I'm going back to Baroque.

[captainpandaplayz]

Runaway by Kanye is really easy to play, but it sounds hard, just letting you know

[rotum]

I personally don’t like the argument that stuff like Mozart is harder because you need to play it cleanly and with character. I have a way easier time playing Mozart in a way that sounds lyrical or „pearl like“ because the technique is so easy that I can just focus on that, and i think Mozart is actually way easier than it sounds, because he goes fast but it’s usually just small arpeggios or alberti basses. The average listener will not see too much of a difference to Liszt because they are anyways too buisy with figuring out if the pianist is speaking a secret body language or if he is having a stroke. And also think that virtuous music needs the same amount of detailed interpretation as Mozart, to sound good, i‘m not impressed just by huge chords, big fast, and (i‘m now going to be little bit racist) Chinese sweating piano combatants and Daniel Trifonov (Master of fucking up the piece cause he is to busy posing dramatically).

[Pamela-dvgb]

For beethoven i think he is middle but hammerklavier to me sound way easier than for exemple hungarian rhapsody 2 but hammerklavier is supposed to be one of the hardest piano piece ever