Rachmaninoff, "Rhapsody On A Theme of Paganini" Opus 43 (18th Variation)

@originnone One of the hardest things about Rachmaninoff is that he wrote for pianists who could manage a huge reach, because he had large hands (a resting twelfth, I once read). I’ve played a couple of his easier pieces, but I said once, if you ever hear a woman playing his more difficult work, and playing it smoothly—be very impressed. 😳

@bijouxbroussard that sounds a big sexist

@samueltyler2 It’s a biological reality that women tend to have smaller hands. The best I can manage is a resting ninth, and I have relatively large hands—for a woman. Most of the composers from back in the day were men, and often they didn’t write for piano with the realization that women would be playing these pieces. Brahms is another example. There are actually pianists’ "hacks" for playing some of his music when you have small hands. They help children, too—it’s how I played some of his waltzes when I was eleven.

@bijouxbroussard wow, I never heard of that before. My neighbor,na woman, teaches piano. I wonder if she picks pieces for her male and female students for this?

@samueltyler2 I don’t know. My teachers never told me "you can’t play this because you’re a girl", but when I played the waltzes one teacher worked with me on my fingering so that the ones with lots of octaves were easier to manage smoothly.

@bijouxbroussard so many things we never understood growing up.