The comment about Holt's Planets was interesting. When Rattle recorded it with the Berlin Phil, wasn't it said that those players didn't know which notes to miss out - which hints at a British tradition of playing the piece. I know that there are some difficult, rapid notes for woodwind towards the end of Mars, for example. I doubt whether the youth orchestra hit every single one of them cleanly but I'm sure a good enough effect was created.

Jack Brymer in his autobiography, From Where I Sit, said that the French clarinetists were the only ones to try and play every single note in The Sorcerer's Apprentice, and they managed it by using particularly thin reeds.

I knew someone who was learning the harp once. According to him his teacher said that no one ever played all the notes in the cadenza at the beginning of the Waltz of the Flowers because it was too difficult. I find that a little hard to believe.

GCSE music syllabus at my daughter's school:

1) Variation and contrast in W Classical Music:
a) Ground Bass
b) Variation
c) Ternary Form
d) Rondo

2) World Music:
a) Gamelan Music
b) Indian Raga
c) African Drumming

3) New Directions 1900 to present day
a) Serialism
b) Minimalism   
c) Experimental Music
d) Electronic Music

4 Popular Song in context
a) 12-bar Blues
b) Reggae
c) Club dance remix
d) Songs for musicals   

All topics to include an element of composition

Three full-time music teachers (one of whom famously described Cornelius Cardew as a "pretentious twat" - no prejudice there), two of whom cover other subjects, two part-time teachers, plus the usual peripatetic instrument teachers.  GCSE students get two hours' teaching a week. 

Having recently helped my daughter with her essays on serialism and minimalism, I would describe the coverage of the subjects - politely - as high level ....

I don't believe the opening of Ondine is, nor need be, as difficult as people imagine, even when played on a relatively heavy action modern instrument. It becomes so when played in an excessively 'fingery' manner, with a fixed wrist, causing many pianists to freeze up when it comes to repeating the triad at a quiet dynamic. Ravel's shimmering figuration becomes rendered as if it were a Czerny exercise, and usually at only a moderately quiet dynamic.



In the above, a down arrow signifies a low wrist, an up arrow a high wrist. The alternation of the wrist position produces a grouping into 3+3+2, the shift in wrist makes the repetition of the triad way easier and smoother (the keys do not have to come up the full way). The fingers very slightly, but only minimally, raised. Care has to be taken at first to ensure the wrist motions are as specified, rather than doing the perhaps more obvious thing of coming down with the wrist onto the A-natural, as one is going from a chord with two black notes in to a single white note. But if practicised for a very short amount of time, this figuration can be played smoothly, rapidly and quietly. Ravel told Riccardo Vines that the melody should be half-submerged within the accompaniment, which is quite different to the 'singing tone' approach more commonly taken.

The real difficulties in Ondine come in passages like the following (I use the error-prone old Durand edition simply for copyright reasons):



But for sheer manic bravura, try the following from Liszt's Reminiscences de Lucrezia Borgia:

What, you mean Ollie wasn't taking any of the ossias in his recording of interference?

Not being a pianist myself, I can't really comment on the relative fingerbreakingness there, but playing a piece like OC which keeps up that level of intensity for such a long time is surely a whole different dimension of "difficulty".

And it might be interesting to add that OC is by no means Sorabji's most virtuosic piece, nor at four and a half hours is it by any stretch the longest - Sonata no.5 (Opus Archimagicum) is a little longer, as is the Fourth Piano Symphony, a complete performance of the Etudes transcendantes would take about six hours, as would the Second and Third Organ Symphonies, and the Symphonic Variations of 1937 is apparently nine hours in duration. None of these works has yet been performed though.

Ian, that's fantastic! Gotta get hold of a copy. 

Ian,
I'd have to agree with the Lucretzia Borgia fantasies as being horribly difficult - I've had the scores for some years and looked at them and thought "no, not just at the moment, wait until I've got my technique back to where it was once and then at least i might stand a slight chance of being able to play them at half speed!"