"Out of reach": an amateur pianist's dream pieces

I was five when I heard my mother playing Beethoven’s Für Elise on our little upright, and I demanded she show me how to conjure that magic with my own hands. With a single-mindedness my adult self envies, I set about learning to read music, shaping my fingers around the 200-year-old notes and coming to an interpretation I felt proud of. The rest of my life as an amateur pianist has proceeded similarly: I hear a piece that strikes a particularly resonant chord and learn it to the best of my ability. It’s still magic to me to reproduce, even approximately, a work of music that gives me goosebumps — but without a world-class technique, I will always wonder how it feels to be one of the very best, to communicate the music exactly as I hear it in my mind without any physical limitations.

Here are ten pieces I’ve played with varying degrees of success, from the virtuosic Liszt that dazzled me as a kid to the fire and romance of Chopin and Ravel I fell in love with as a teenager; the crisp Baroque lines of Bach and Scarlatti that sparked a renewed musical focus in my twenties; the idiosyncratic poetry of Schumann that I had always enjoyed but came to fully adore in my thirties; and of course, the piece that first made me dream of being a concert pianist, and the one on this list whose explosive cadenzas, lightning-quick finger work, and supersized chords remain the furthest out of reach for me (though I’ll never stop trying)…

Liszt: Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2

Full disclosure: I don’t think I’m alone in admitting that Bugs Bunny introduced me to this famous showpiece. In the classic cartoon “Rhapsody Rabbit,” the wascally wabbit resorts to all manner of unorthodox techniques to perform its most famous themes, using his toes, bunny-hopping up and down the keyboard, playing the piano like a scrolling typewriter. 

Caught off guard during my Saturday morning cartoons and totally captivated by the virtuosity of the music, I convinced my parents to let me send away for the score — but when it arrived and I began reading through it, it felt as if I had convinced a magician to reveal his secret and the secret had been, “it’s actually magic.” There were simply too many notes, and too much speed, for two hands and ten fingers (and my feet were no help at all). I still delight in playing the iconic opening section and the introductory bars of the Friska (the section where Liszt turns the dial to 11), but for these raucous, circus-like themes accompanied by hand-contorting figurations and scales performed faster than the naked eye can discern, I can only marvel at Mao Fujita, who doesn’t need the tricks of Bugs’s animated cels to pull off his Lisztian magic.

Liszt: “La Campanella” from Grandes Études de Paganini

This dazzling etude is centered around a simple but immediately memorable theme, which is transformed and elaborated over the course of a few minutes of pianistic tightrope walking, where every incorrect note is totally exposed. Extreme precision is called for throughout as various technical means are called for to maintain the tolling bell that gives the piece its title. In this excerpt, Evgeny Kissin exemplifies that precision, executing the right-hand tremolos with a dexterity I could only dream of, passing into a legatissimo chromatic run, and then pulling off huge leaps and rapidfire octaves in both hands without ever putting a note awry.

Chopin: Ballade No. 4 in F minor

I gave up the piano for a few years in elementary school after the methods of a strict teacher made me lose sight of the joy of musicmaking, but in the fifth grade I discovered Chopin and have never looked back since. I can pull off some Waltzes, Nocturnes, and Mazurkas without major embarrassment, and I have occasionally managed an almost passable reading of my two favorite Ballades, Nos. 1 and 4. But for me the 4th Ballade is perhaps Chopin’s grandest and most romantic statement, and Lucas Debargue’s thoughtful and refined approach lets its grandeur and romance fully shine. This recapitulation of the haunting main theme, with steady triplet figures in the left hand and delicate cross-rhythms in the right, is one of my favorite moments in all of Chopin, and Debargue navigates all its difficulties — and the development toward the thunderous coda — with the perfect combination of finesse and force.

Ravel: “Ondine” from Gaspard de la nuit

Ravel’s Gaspard de la nuit is notoriously difficult, so I know I’m not the only one who has found my dreams of piano perfection dashed upon the rocks by the liquid arpeggios and polyrhythms of “Ondine.” (I played through “Scarbo” once or twice as a teenager and have not yet felt the need to try again — maybe in another few decades.) At the beginning of this excerpt, played with exquisite fluency by Saehyun Kim, the right-hand accompaniment is so difficult that I need to put nearly all my focus on it to have any hope of muddling through — but the left hand has the melody and can’t be overpowered. Kim’s performance is flawless and deeply felt, evoking the roaring cascades and gentle droplets surrounding the titular water nymph all the way to the mysterious ending, one of my favorites in any solo piano work.

Chopin: Andante spianato and Grande polonaise brillante

I heard and fell in love with this wonderfully spirited piece at 14. It was an unseasonably warm evening in mid-May, and I remember working on a tricky passage as the sun set and into the night, sweating, nearly feverish, and utterly transported by the music — some of my fondest piano memories. The introductory Andante spianato is one of Chopin’s most elegant creations, and the polonaise itself has everything I love about Chopin: nobility, defiance, romance, and mischief, all demonstrated to the fullest extent by Evgeny Kissin in this three-minute excerpt alone. I return to this piece on the first warm evening of every year; as far as I’m concerned, summer can’t arrive without it.

Beethoven: “Appassionata” Sonata No. 23 in F minor

I love so many of Beethoven’s sonatas, and there are about a hundred moments from this one I could choose as highlights — but even from one of the greatest masters of the memorable ending, the conclusion of the stormy “Appassionata” is a standout. At my level, I can favor either speed or precision here, but the drama and intensity of this culminating moment depend on both, and the great Daniel Barenboim doesn’t have to choose between them, creating a whirlwind of sheer exhilaration.

Scarlatti: Sonata in D minor, K. 141

This fiery miniature was written in the early 18th century, but when Martha Argerich performs it as an encore, all that matters is that it is happening now. It’s the kind of short, snappy piece that demands perfection, and when I heard Argerich’s rendition in my late teens, it inspired me to practice more seriously than I had in years, taking it note by note and avoiding shortcuts and approximations — though of course never approaching Martha’s level, which is spine-tinglingly good. Her repeated notes are a wonder, her voicing a miracle, her tempo an elemental force, still as powerful for me hundreds of listens later as it was the first time.

Bach: Piano Partita No. 2 in C minor

I’m slightly embarrassed to admit it now, but though I always loved his Violin Partitas and Cello Suites, the appeal of much of Bach’s extraordinary writing for keyboard was a bit lost on me in my younger years. Argerich showed me how thrilling, vital, and alive this music could sound, and I’ve been a Bach devotee ever since. Some movements of the glorious Partita in C minor are fairly straightforward, but few pianists can pull off the final Rondeau and Capriccio with the sensitivity, dynamism, and velocity of Argerich. Listen here to the end of the Rondeau as the piano’s melodic line descends in inverse proportion to the ratcheting intensity, reaching a breaking point at the final chord — and instead of pausing for a breath, Argerich uses that momentum to spring directly into the Capriccio. Martha pulls off this four-minute master class in polyphony with a remarkable, almost improvisatory sense of spontaneity.

Schumann: Symphonic Études, Op. 13

Schumann’s Symphonic Études are a set of variations on a deliciously dark theme in C minor, the ultimate mood music ranging from sprightly dance (Étude V) to furious agitation (Étude VI), plaintive despair (Étude XI), and martial triumph (Finale). Here in Études IX and X, Vladimir Ashkenazy shows off one of the most deceptively difficult piano skills that often separates the pros from the amateurs: the absolute, unwavering control of dynamics at high speed in technically difficult passages. Ashkenazy brings subtle gradations of color and volume to Étude IX, marked Presto possibile (as fast as possible), making it sound breezy and delicate instead of heavy and cumbersome. He ramps up the ferocity in Étude X but keeps the complex sixteenth-note figurations on a second plane under the main melodic line, which sings out clearly amid the chromatic maelstrom. 

Rachmaninov: Piano Concerto No. 3 in D minor

A misunderstanding of the psychological stakes in the movie Shine, which I watched around age eight, led me to believe that Australian pianist David Helfgott’s emotional collapse had been directly caused by the difficulty of Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto No. 3. This piece took on a mythical and formidable status in my mind, and for years I felt almost too afraid to listen. But eventually my curiosity won out and I became utterly enchanted, listening to it again and again, attempting to decipher its many layers and committing every measure to memory. 

Over the years, I have painstakingly played through the “Rach 3” many times just to feel the shape of it, and occasionally “polished” a few favorite sections, but the concerto will always remain my pianistic white whale. That just makes it all the sweeter to hear the awe-inspiring renditions that today’s top artists are capable of. When I had the incredible fortune to witness Yunchan Lim perform it at the Cliburn Competition in 2022, the great Marin Alsop was not the only one in the hall who shed a tear. Watch Yunchan in one of my all-time favorite sequences: the apotheosis of the first-movement cadenza, featuring a toccata-like reprise of the movement’s enigmatic opening theme, followed by a volley of thunderous chords, brilliantly harmonized between minor and major, wringing triumph from catastrophe.

Here’s another highlight from the second movement, a rapturous Rachmaninovian romance that bears as many thorny difficulties as the outer movements. In this excerpt, the superb Nelson Goerner pulls off a tricky balancing act, matching the fervor of the swelling orchestra at the climax, returning to a mode of fine expressiveness for the recurrence of the D-flat Aeolian dominant scale — basically a minor scale given an ineffably exciting quality by raising its third step — and then heading off to the races in the virtuosic section that begins our transition into the third and final movement.

Though the Rach 3 has a fittingly grand ending, one of the most thrilling in the concert repertoire — go listen to it after this if you don’t know it! — I want to end by highlighting a different section near the beginning of the third movement that I often find to be a microcosm of the concerto as a whole. It’s a short excerpt lasting under a minute where the pianist, almost entirely exposed with minimal orchestral accompaniment, must bring a great deal of personality to maintain the piece’s momentum. Rachmaninov marks this section Scherzando, which means “joking,” and Yunchan Lim plays it with just the right amount of mischief, keeping the rapidfire chromatic flourishes light and airy without ever losing sight of the deep emotion that underlies the chord changes. I could practice this one thousand (more) times and never achieve this result; like many music lovers, I can only thank artists like Yunchan for the astonishing hard work they put in so that we can enjoy the music of Rachmaninov, and all our other favorites, as they were meant to be heard.