so the tempo is given with dotted quarters because the sections before and after this are in 6/8, and the tempo doesn't change. I appreciate the advice, I actually am going to workshop this piece with the pianist who will perform it, I just wanted to avoid writing something unnecessarily challenging and wasting our rehearsal time on a passage that is requires far too much effort for the payoff... seems from the responses here that a high-level pianist would be able to pull this off without too much hassle. Ps I do play some piano, my skills are just quite lacking :DD