Gaspard De La Nuit

What's the most difficult piece of piano music? I guess in a certain sense, every piece is equally difficult, since if you want to impress people, you have to play it as good as humanly possible. Beethoven's Piano Sonata No. 14 ("Moonlight") might not be the first that springs to mind when people talk about difficult pieces, but then again, it's a piece that everyone knows (or at least the melody from the first movement), and a lot of people can play it, and a lot of people have published recordings, so when you play it, you are competing with lots and lots and lots of people and with the expectations of a lot of people. So if you want to become famous as the person who plays the Moonlight Sonata better than anyone else, that's nigh impossible.

The caption asks for a somewhat easier task, that is, just to play all the right notes in the right order, not to play better than anyone else. But since the piece in question is Ravel's notoriously difficult Gaspard de la Nuit, good luck with that. Because that's technically difficult, not just in the broader sense that all pieces of music are difficult as mentioned above.

Gaspard de la Nuit probably isn't the most technically difficult piece ever composed: contemporary music has produced some truly astonishingly devious literature. But I've chosen it instead of some other, even more demanding pieces because it's also one that I consider to be not only difficult, but also hauntingly beautiful. The first recording I've heard was by Martha Argerich, so that became my version of it. Others prefer other recordings, and they may have good and convincing arguments, but those other recordings are not that magical first encounter for me.