Rare piano pieces, I'm looking for pieces that hardly anyone plays.. anyone know any..at an advanced level.

Not a lot of people plat Clementi Sonatas at an advanced level so I have been playing him. Mostly its Beethoven, Schubert and Haydn. When it comes to Baroque I am not sure what else there is to play other than Bach and his C.P.E Bach.. A lot of Romantic composers have been overlooked mostly Chopin, Mendelssohn, Liszt and Schumann played....so anyone have any suggestions????

If you look at the ABRSM Easier Series of books, they have a lot of easier short pieces by fairly unknown piano composers such as Fibich, Moskowski, Gliere, Rebikov etc - you might be able to find harder pieces by them somewhere........ I know for a fact Martin Roscoe, the British pianist, has recorded many of the lesser or almost unknown piano concertos by more obscure romantic piano composers, so I'm sure these composers must have written other music..........Try the ABRSM publishing site for ideas for names......

You could also try some of Poulenc's lesser known piano pieces, quite difficult though, and those of his friend and contemporary of the time Ricardo Vines the Spanish composer and pianist.

The latter wrote a fantastic piano sonata, ' luz y sonido'', it's a beautiful piece of music and uses almost all of the 88 keys of the piano with its majestic sweeping arpeggios and chromatic like scales; a very difficult piece in the key of C#minor. It took me 9 months to learn, but madre mia es sonata muy muy bonita!!

Scriabine?

I'd also say that even for well-known composers, only a fairly small selection of their works gets played. For example, Beethoven wrote 32 piano sonatas, yet maybe only 10 get regular performance, the named ones usually. Liszt wrote a collossal amount of music, admittedly much of it not truly special, but there are some gems to be found in there. So, keep looking.

How about a nice piece of William Alwyn: Sonata alla Toccata for example ?

Erwin Schulhof

Rawsthorne?

Thank you everyone! This really helps! I will definatley look into them and see what I can pick out.
:)SMILES!

Get a copy of Liszt's Piano Piece in Aflat 189

It's not difficult but a really beautiful piece and hardly know about as I understand it. I've got the Bardic edition and Blackwells in Oxford got it for me. Also there is an Impromptu in F sharp by Liszt which is also fabulous. I don't know the number but I have it in a liszt volume ISMN M 080 06217 3

Hope this will be useful.

I dug this out and ran through it this afternoon - great piece! Any idea if this would be accepted as an own choice work for the LRSM examination?

Bax In a Vodka Shop. Not sure about level. I think I was probably about Grade 8 when I learnt it. I don't remember ever hearing anyone else play it.

I used to drive my piano teacher crazy by playing pieces that were slightly off the beaten track. The Janacek I turned up with one week caused a few sighs, and the Delius was enough to lead him to specify which Beethoven sonata I should learn (which was probably actually a very wise move!).

Good suggestions all, and well done you for deciding to branch out into lesser-known works. Think about which composers' works you like - did they write anything for piano? Are there any slightly obscure works by well-known composers that might be worth investigating? Have you played anything recently which has made you want to find out more of that composer's output?

As for the Alwyn and LRSM, I can't answer that. The only Alwyn I've played is for clarinet (and is fiendish!).