🏆 First ever · Sep 12 & 13
Two competitions, a $100 prize pool, and a real piano duel in 1830s Vienna. Open to every pianist in the online community, and to everyone who wants to watch.
A name and an email is all it takes. You'll get the schedule, the pieces and a say in the repertoire.
Getting better at the piano is two things, technique and artistry, and you can't have one without the other. So there are two brackets, and each one judges one thing.
🎯 Saturday, September 12
Für Elise, the Moonlight Sonata, Chopin's E-minor Prelude, Mozart's C-major Sonata and the Turkish March, one per round. Two players at once in duel mode, the game scoring every note against the metronome, the spectators watching in real time to see who makes fewer mistakes.
Judged by: the game's scoring. Right notes, on the beat.
🎭 Sunday, September 13
Popular pieces chosen by the community, played in free-form mode with the sheet music and the falling keys but no metronome. A coin flip decides who goes first, each pianist performs, and the audience votes on who was more expressive and deserves the next round.
Judged by: the audience. Beauty, phrasing, feeling.
Ten seconds of each. The game reads your keyboard and judges every note against the score; in a duel it does that for both players at once.
The prizes
Two winners, $100 in cash, and two legendary pianos leave Vienna that weekend.
Head to head in duel mode. The game scores both players at the same time and the spectators watch it happen.
Both pianists enter a room with the sheet music and the falling keys, in free-form mode with no metronome.
The artistry repertoire isn't decided yet, on purpose. Everyone who signs up can suggest pieces and vote for as many as they like, live, until Tuesday, September 8. The top five become the bracket.
Voting closes Tuesday, September 8
The community picks the pieces. The five with the most votes when the poll closes are the artistry bracket, one per round.
Nothing on the poll yet. Be the first to suggest one.
Sign up (as a player or a spectator) to vote and to suggest pieces.
Sign up to voteIn 1837, Liszt and Thalberg had a legendary piano duel that drew all of Paris together to hear two great masters go head to head. Back then piano duels were common in local pubs and saloons: pianists would improvise, play variations and show off their skill and artistry in front of a boisterous audience. Two hundred years later they have all but disappeared, replaced by a “Dueling Pianos” gimmick where the pianists are karaoke leaders getting cruise-ship vacationers to sing Wonderwall.
I grew up on online games like World of Warcraft and loved the social side of them. Hundreds of hours later, I realised I hadn't built a single real-life skill from mashing a keyboard at a monster. And my favourite thing in the world, playing the piano, had no online world of its own: nowhere to duel other pianists, swap tips, and get better together.
Ultimate Pianist is about making you a better pianist, and as a teacher I've learned that comes down to two things. Technique and artistry. A pianist with only technique plays like a robot; a pianist with only artistry can't express what they feel clearly enough to touch anyone. Accuracy is easy to judge, so the game does it. Artistry needs real people listening, so the audience does that. Scoring both in one run would just be confusing, and splitting them is more fun: the accuracy players can drill the classics slowly and precisely, and the artistry players can spend the week on making a melody sing.
These two days are our chance, as a piano community, to see if we can build a world where pianists compete, get better together, and find out who has the steadier hands and who has the bigger heart. I hope you're as excited as I am.
Lionel
The game is set in 1830s Vienna, where the ghosts of Mozart and Beethoven wander the streets, the local saloon hosts real piano duels, and the concert halls are the ones the immortals once played in.
September 12 & 13, 2026. Thirty-two seats a bracket, and the first ones go to whoever signs up first.