IMSLP Forums

I don't know much modern music so I was hoping that someone here could help point me in the direction of some Modern pieces/composers.
Thank you all a bunch!

Oh, there's tons out there! A lot of the good stuff is very hard though, so start with something easy. It takes a while to get used to the language (rhythm and harmony)—don't give up!

Some of Ravel's best music is his piano music from 1910-1920. I highly recommend Le Tombeau de Couperin (very hard)

Similarly, Debussy's second book of Préludes and his Études are just after 1910. Brilliant works, and ranging from easy to very hard.

Schönberg's piano music is great, especially Op. 19 (great intro to 20th century piano music—easy!), Op. 11, and Op. 25

Webern's Variations, Op. 27 is wonderful, but rather difficult—start with the last variation.

Stravinsky's solo music after 1910 is very good: Piano-Rag Music (hard) and Serenade in A (not too hard) are both great pieces. He has some virtuoso arrangements, notably his Three Pieces from Petrushka, which are extraordinarily difficult.

Bartók's solo piano music, except for Mikrokosmos (probably not worth your time) tends to be very, very hard. Still, Allegro Barbaro (1911) is a very rewarding piece, as is Out of Doors, the Sonata, and Romanian Folk Dances.

Skrjabin's later works (Opp. 59-74) are highly interesting and developmental pieces. I especially recommend the late sonatas and Vers la Flamme. These can be intermediate-difficult.

Prokofiev also wrote some insanely difficult piano music (e.g. Sonata No. 7, Suggestion Diabolique), but some of his better works (the sonatas tend to be pretty good, too, esp. Nos. 4-8) are his Sarcasms and Visions Fugitive, etc. which Dover has published in a nice set.

Shostakovich wrote his best piano music (in my opinion) later in his life, the 24 Preludes and Fugues, Op. 87, which range from very easy to very difficult. Highly recommended.

I'm not going to go into Rachmaninoff, because you probably know that reasonably well, but of course the Études-Tableaux and Variations on a Theme of Corelli are worth looking into.

Ives wrote a small quantity of solo piano music (that's available—a good deal is still in manuscript). The Concord Sonata, despite some immense difficulties, is one of the great works of piano music. The Three Page Sonata is also pretty good.

Speaking of American modernists, Ruth Crawford Seeger wrote some good piano music, too (not too difficult!), esp. Prelude Nos. 1 and 9, and her Study in Mixed Accents.

Also, the piano music of Roger Sessions is very good, spanning his whole life—in fact, just about all of it is good. Intermediate-very difficult.

Some of Aaron Copland's best music, too, is piano music, especially the Piano Variations (intermediate) and the Piano Fantasy (hard). The sonata (along with the Barber sonata) is OK, and rather hard.

Elliot Carter's piano music is probably going to be too difficult, but the Sonata and Night Fantasies are worth mentioning as extremely significant piano works of the 20th century.

Hindemith wrote some great piano music, too, especially Ludus Tonalis and the suite 1922.

Boulez's three sonatas are almost certainly too difficult (the second is perhaps the hardest piano piece ever written), but the 12 Notations aren't too hard, and are very good pieces.

Messiaen also wrote tons of piano music, and I personally adore his Catalogue d'Oiseaux (very hard, some intermediate). Also, the Quatre Études de Rhythme are very important historically, and great pieces as well (intermediate-hard).

Later in the 20th century, almost every great work gets to be extremely difficult. Stockhausen's Klavierstücke are great, but very hard. Ligeti's Etudes are similar. So are Bolcom's 12 New Etudes. And Wolpe's Battle Piece.

The 20th century has some of the best piano music out there. Have fun playing it!

Thank you so much. You really helped me a lot. It's about time for me to start on modern music. I just can't stop playing romantic music.

There's a lot of fairly Romantic post-1910 piano music too (not much in the above list is, though I have a lot of it in my collection- I adore Roger Sessions' music and many other works listed there too, but Romantic in the usually-understood sense, probably no.)
I'm not a pianist and am no judge of difficulty, unfortunately.
But Romantic piano music written after 1910 might also include works by for example Nikolai Medtner (a good friend of Rachmaninoff but no clone; often but not always quite difficult, but worth looking for his easier works to play and at least listening to recordings of his harder ones ), Arnold Bax (four fine sonatas and other works- the first may predate the post-1910 period we're sticking to, not sure I remember...), Karol Szymanowski from Poland (influenced by Scriabin and Chopin in his earlier music especially, also somewhat by Max Reger as is often mentioned, always more than the sum of his influences; three early(ish) sonatas and a body of piano music throughout the length of his career from his first surviving work to (just about?) his last, though not all of them!- his opus 21 2nd sonata is his first work after 1910, leaving 41 more published works up to his opus 62 2 mazurkas of 1933-4)... perhaps Walter Niemann (from the look of his works, several of which are on IMSLP, from the op.7 of 1909 to the op.84 of 1922 - the last of his works to be readable by people in the US, anyway, given copyright law ... (list)... and so forth... again, enjoy!