# Most performed works & composers



## Gyan

I came across some interesting information that I thought this community would appreciate.

There's this company InstantEncore which tracks classical concerts worldwide, and they have published two lists viz. the most performed works and composers, respectively, in 2009.

I see no great surprises in the composers list with Beethoven at top, and Mozart right behind. The prevalence _seems_ to follow a power law. I don't know if that's to be expected. One thing I'd like to have had was a list which removed operas, ballets, vocal and all "stage" works from consideration.

Among the rankings of performed works, Nutcracker is in a league of its own. I wonder about the robustness of Messiah's No.2 standing if you took into account the fact of it being some sort of a fixture in Anglophone countries. Only mildly surprised to see Beethoven's Seventh as the top ranked concert piece. Glad to see Dvorak's 8th is appreciated with 80% as many performances as the 9th (for some reason, I tagged Dvorak as publicly liked only for the 9th, although I love his 6th, 7th and 8th as well). But one thing which this list makes clear is that if you remove the stage works, there's a lot less classical music being performed than it seems.

Your thoughts?


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## Weston

Yes, let's disregard Nutcracker and Messiah as a given. I am alarmed at some of the entries and some of the glaring omissions. Where are the Bruckner symphonies that should be on the list, or higher on the list? And the Diabelli Variations outranking the Jupiter symphony? Even as a die hard Beethoven fan, I don't quite get this.

I think some popular works like Beethoven's 9th are lower than expected on the list because of the massive (expensive) forces required to play them.


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## Sid James

I looked on the composers list & am not surprised that it's pretty Eurocentric. At least some of my favourites are there, like Piazzolla, Villa-Lobos & Frank Martin (he just made it, second last!)...


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## HarpsichordConcerto

_Messiah_ has the marketing appeal twice a year - Easter and Christmas. I would suspect the vast majority of _Messiah_ performances are during those two months.


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## Josef Anton Bruckner

Well I can tell you that Bruckner's 1st, 2nd, 5th, and 6th are out of the running...


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## Lukecash12

Rach's _3rd Piano Concerto_, Mozart's _Jupiter Symphony_, Chopin's _Ballade no 1_, Bach's _Goldberg Variations_, Debussy's _Arabesque no 1_, Beethoven's _9th Symphony_, Brahm's _Lullaby_, Strauss' _Danube Waltz_, Tchaikovsky's _Waltz of the Flowers_, Debussy's _Au Claire De La Lune_, Handel's _Sarabande_, Widor's most famous _Organ Symphony (the Toccata in particular)_, Liszt's _Hungarian Rhapsody_, Ifukube's _Symphonic Fantasia no 1_, Vivaldi's _Le Quattro Stagioni - L'Estate_, Mozart's _Requiem_, Rubinstein's _Valse Caprice_, Mendelssohn's _Italian Symphony_, Dvorak's _New World Symphony_, Cesar Franck's _first three chorales_, Granados' _Recuerdos De La Alhambra_, Chopin's _Fantasie Impromptu_, Palestrina's _Sicut Cervus_, Verdi's _Requiem_, _Prokofeiv's Peter and the Wolf_, Gustav Holst's _The Planets_, Stravinsky's _Rite of Spring_, Sibelius' _Violin Concerto_, Haydn's _Farewell Symphony_, Beethoven's _Moonlight Sonata_, Boccherini's _String Quintet in G-Major, Op. 60 No. 5_, Carcassi's _Estudio Op. 60 no. 7_, Ravel's _Gaspard de la Nuit no. 3- Scarbo_, Mussorgsky's _A Night On Bald Mountain_, Paganini's _La Campanella_, Schubert's _Serenade_.

And that's everything off the top of my head right now. Pretty common composers and works.


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## Josef Anton Bruckner

What about Ravel's tedious Bolero? It seems overplayed...and over appreciated, in my view.


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## Chi_townPhilly

Had a look at number 64 on the "Composers" list-

Someone named "Traditional."

Numbers 2 and 3 on the web-site's attribtions to "Traditional" are "Erie Canal" and "Shenandoah."

Not gonna say there's anything wrong with 'em (there's a bit of Americana in singing about 
"know[ing] every inch of the way/from Albany to Buffalo"), but we can't call it "classical" really...


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## shsherm

I think that Gershwin's Rhapsody In Blue belongs in the frequently performed works. I even heard it in Amsterdam at the Concertgebouw by the St. Petersburg Symphony.


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## science

The OP's link no longer works. I wonder if there's some updated information on this?


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## kv466

I don't know if selections are regional but some seem to be way overplayed here.


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