Question by Grant: Which Rachmaninoff Prelude is the easiest to play?
I play piano and I’m around a grade 7 and I like the Rachmaninoff Preludes but they all sound hard. Which one would suit me? Is the Prelude in G minor no 5 hard to play?
Answers and Views:
Answer by Lleu
Op. 3 No. 2 is fairly easy. Way overplayed, but fairly easy. The g minor one requires some amount of stamina. Not horribly tricky. I’m not exactly sure what level 7 means, so I can’t tell you whether or not it would be difficult for you. If you aren’t good at proper voicing in chords, I would say wait for it.
Read all the answers in the comments.
What do you think?
Nemesis says
No Rachmaninoff 'anything' is easy to play, so 'easiest' transmutes into 'least difficult' at a stroke, and then what is perhaps physically not so hard, often turns out to be musically quite the opposite. Given that, 'Gary's two suggestions above are really cleverly chosen, and for that I'd recommend them to you.
(At grade 7 I think you might find that you struggle with Rachmaninoff's keyboard thinking, but just try to experiment and 'see how far you get' without thinking it's going to have to be your next performance piece. That may be a little while off yet, where Rachmaninoff is concerned.)
All the best,
"Gary" says
The one you mentioned is fairly hard, unless you're good with octaves and inner voices.
His easiest is probably the op 23 no.10:
or op 32 no 11 (a bit repetitive though) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=roxMDD3YLaE&fe…