What, Like It’s Hard?

If you spend much time playing classical music on YouTube, it won’t be long before the algorithm starts recommending videos purporting to compile “The 20 Hardest Piano Pieces EVER”. I have watched a slightly embarrassing number of these videos, and what strikes me most about them these days are their narrowness of focus. I don’t mean narrowness in terms of repertoire selection — although, in truth, it’s rare that these compilations include anything beyond the bog-standard core of the mainstream repertoire — but instead a narrowness in understanding of what makes a piece of music hard. The pieces they gather are, indeed, usually difficult, but they’re usually all difficult in the same way: they all require the player to play a bunch of notes very quickly with lots of gnarly leaps and runs. This is a common enough understanding of “hard” music even outside of YouTube clickbait, but it’s a fundamentally incomplete one, and today I’d like to outline some other ways that pieces of music can give top-notch players a run for their money.