Could 88ztreet this thread right up and just go for the most difficult etude out of the all the sets bar Chopin (coz that one’s settled 
)
I guess my original thinking for the question was for the supposed most difficult etude to cover each technique. For instance Debussy or Chopin or Alkan Octave etude?
Thinking about it, even then - Chopin is lyrical/legato octaves, Debussy jumps around (from memory) and Kan is virtuoso power. So it still don’t work.
Bah, burn it.
Which piece are you talking about for da Kan?
By the way, Liszt and Lyapunov were not the only one who wrote “transcendental etudes”.
Ever heard of Sorabji’s? He wrote 100 (!) of them.
Not particularly interested in him after listening to Opus Clav, but perhaps some of them may not be a complete waste of time:
35/5 or 35/12?
No. 11 is my nomination for hardest major key etude by a reputable romantic era figure. #88st 
Harder than TE5? It sounds like a pastiche of it in some ways!
Oh, it’s a virtual ripoff. But yes, I think it is harder.
I say - it depends on the field of competition.
To play Liapet11 at the level of the best rec of it vs playing TE5 at the level of the best rec of that.
In absolute terms TE5 may be less hard but I don’t think it words that way in the practical world.
35 5 had in mind but whatever’s ‘harder’.
You actually listened to all of cumbalisticum? Rezpek! I think…
Na, rezpec da Ullen for trying to play/record all 100 Sorabjets. Interesting guy, this Ullen. Not only a very rezpectable peniszt but also a Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience. I wonder if da X knows him…
Nope. Barely his records either.
His CD “got a minute” was shared here a long time ago.
Yes that’s what I have, though from long before I knew of da SDC. I think he only acts as a studio musician incidentally, I don’t remember having seen any concerts advertised with him.
Well, so did 
Not that Ullen and GG have much in common 
It was nice for 2 minutes then I skipped ahead and was still ‘nice’ then I skipped ahead and was still ‘nice’…
Is Sorabji the equivalent of a cult movie? Enjoyed by a few only coz if it’s eccentricities?
I went through a Sorabji phase back in the noughties (mostly because AH was so obnoxiously anti-piracy and it amused me to get everything I could off eMule, GFF etc.) - I think most of his stuff is Emperor’s New Clothes, but some of his smaller pieces, like In The Hothouse, Gulistan and the Rimsky-Korsakov paraphrase are quite good.
Well, at least some people out there (including Ullen who plays them well afaict) believe in them. There’s even a complete overview on Wiki: