No.109 — From the Island of Bali
Piano solo ~3 min
In brief

This piece has a percussive, lively character, suggesting exotic rhythms and motifs that behave more like detached strikes than a continuous singing line. You will face particular challenges with Syncopes (4.1/5) — you must place displaced accents by slightly anticipating releases — and with Hand Independence (Indépendance des mains, 4.1/5), where one hand sustains or keeps steady accents while the other plays contrasting rhythmic figures, requiring separate control of touch and timing in each hand. The work belongs to Bartók's piano repertoire that explores rhythmic color and non‑Western influences, translating instrumental and percussive gestures to the piano.

MusicCoach difficulty
52/100
Intermediate
Likely range : 34–70/100
Confidence : 48% · to confirm
BeginnerIntermediateAdvancedVirtuoso
Exam grade
About grade 5 to 6

Estimated from our difficulty score, not taken from an exam syllabus. Checked against 333 works on the ABRSM syllabus: the exact grade is right 7 times out of 10, and within one grade 99 times out of 100.

Difficulty estimate by MusicCoach on a scale of 1 to 100.

Where this work sits
050100

Most works cluster between 45 and 65: a small score gap often marks a real step. The highlighted bar shows this work among those for the same instrument.

The MusicCoach difficulty measures a work's overall demands (technique, reading, stamina) on a shared 0-100 scale, consolidated from editorial and pedagogical reference points (Henle, exam syllabuses, curation) and our own analyses. It measures neither musical value nor the practice time YOU will need: two musicians of the same level can experience the same work very differently depending on their strengths (hands used to octaves, quick sight-reading…). The confidence reflects how many reference points sit behind the score and how well they agree — a lightly documented score is flagged “to validate”. For a truly personal bearing, the diagnostic and your space compare each work to YOUR estimated level, which the score alone cannot do.

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Difficulty sources
Combined exam syllabi
Grade 5
44/100 normalised
MusicCoach consensus
uncertain
Relative difficulty
81%
Among Béla Bartók
58%
Era
Genre
Estimated skills
Technique
Hand independence
1
Rhythm
Dotted rhythms
1
Rhythm
Syncopation
1
Technique
Fast passages
1
Rhythm
General rhythm
1
Technique
General technique
1
What to play next?

Each suggestion combines difficulty gap, risk, confidence and skill overlap. The first two cards in each column are the most useful pedagogically.

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