Well he famously did fall asleep while Liszt played his famous piano sonata, much to the latter’s furor. These two were not too fond of each other.
Seriously though, the scherzo from Ludwig B’s Piano Sonata #18 has always struck me as almost presaging boogie woogie. I could never play it without wanting to swing with it a little.
I’m all about boogie woogie—it’s my go-to when I sit down at the keyboard. Here’s Jörg Hegemann, a German pianist who trained in the classical tradition but made the switch to boogie—and it tells! He plays with the precision and polish of a concert hall virtuoso but brings the chops and groove of a smoky blues bar player. It’s as though Beethoven came back from the dead and decided to start playing honky-tonk in a Berlin jazz club.
well, to Liszt’s defense: Brahms couln’t stay awake to “Sweet Home Alabama”, either … so there is that.
May as well leave this here…
Béla Bartók’s “Allegro Barbaro” is a metal headbanger. A natural choice for Emerson Lake & Palmer.
Big ELP fan here.
Keith Emerson didn’t just play the keys—he attacked them. The guy had perfect pitch and a fearless style that fused classical precision with pure rock fury. Mostly self-taught (no fancy conservatory like Juilliard for this guy), but he was an obsessive student of music, diving deep into Bach, Bartók, Prokofiev, Ginastera, and others.
I especially loved when he went wild on the Hammond B3 + Leslie cabinet—what a fat sound! (I had the pleasure of playing that rig in HS jazz band—alas, not nearly as good as Emerson). And his Moog? Keith made it scream like a banshee.
Some of ELP’s most unforgettable classical spins include:
- Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition
- Copland’s Fanfare for the Common Man
- Bartók’s Allegro Barbaro
- Ginastera’s Toccata
- And Holst’s “Mars” from The Planets—Emerson had a thing for that one
Keith left us way too soon. A brilliant mind, an explosive performer, a true original. He didn’t just play music—he detonated it.
Rick Wakeman (solo and with YES) is another great progressive rock keyboardist with classical chops. Great sense of humor, too—check out some of his pod casts.
When you mentioned Bartók, I thought you were going to link to this :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lJb3T2f8hkQ
I don’t know whether ELP covered it but the first movement is as metal as it gets (on a piano).
If you want a Romantic era metal headbanger, try Liszt’s Totentanz. It takes the grim Dies Irae and turns it into a gothic shred-fest. One second you’re tiptoeing past coffins under torchlight, the next you’re ripping through the abyss on a fire-breathing nightmare horse. It would make Ozzie Osbourne proud. 
Led Zeppelin did another song besides “Stairway to Heaven”?
Huh.
Not Watt?