Top 10 Hardest Piano/Keyboard Pieces by Bach

Of all the great composers for keyboard, Bach is perhaps the easiest to underestimate. You won't find huge chords and blazing octave passages here, but it's the awkward fingerings and contrapuntal complexity that can often leave a pianist's brain hurting as much as their fingers. Even his relatively modest works can be deceptively challenging, and the near-total transparency of his writing leaves the performer with very little room for error. Therefore, what makes a Bach piece harder is usually the scope and breadth of the work rather than the difficulties of individual passages. Maintaining finger independence, thoughtfully working through each voice, thinking musically throughout—approachable if it's a 5 minute prelude and fugue, not so much if its an entire suite or a set. Also, I've always found it fascinating how many different ways there are of playing Bach on the piano, so I've deliberately included a large variety of pianists that have tackled this challenge. 10. Chromatic Fantasia and Fugue, BWV 903 (7) 0:00 Friedrich Gulda 9. Toccata in F-sharp minor, BWV 910 (7+) 1:08 Angela Hewitt 8. English Suite No.3 (7+) 3:24 Ivo Pogorelić 4:17 Rosalyn Tureck 7. Partita No.4 in D major, BWV 828 (7+) 5:14 Tatiana Nikolayeva 6:17 Andras Schiff 6. Toccata in C minor, BWV 911 (7+) 7:12 Samuil Feinberg 8:07 Cyprien Katsaris 5. Brandenburg Concerto No. 5, BWV 1050 (7+) 9:04 Alfred Cortot (the best Brandenburg cadenza ever recorded!) 12:19 Edwin Fischer 4. English Suite No.6 in D minor, BWV 811 (7++) 13:50 Sviatoslav Richter 15:16 Murray Perahia 3. Partita No.6 in E minor, BWV 830 (7++) 17:43 Grigory Sokolov 19:11 Tatiana Nikolayeva 2. Goldberg Variations, BWV 988 (8+ 20:37 Víkingur Ólafsson 22:23 Beatrice Rana 24:27 Glenn Gould 1. The Art of Fugue, BWV 1080 (8++) 25:21 Grigory Sokolov 28:40 Pierre-Laurent Aimard 30:31 Zhu Xiao-Mei 32:46 Evgeni Koroliov Honorable mentions: French Overture, Ricercar a 6, Keyboard Concerto No.1, Italian Concerto, Toccata in D, Toccata in Gm