# the world is your audience



## science (Oct 14, 2010)

You can play any instrument or you could sing, absolutely as well as you'd like. You can perform solo or with your fellow world-class mucisians. 

But you only get to perform one thing. One work. 

It is your moment, your message to the world. 

What do you choose to perform?


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## starry (Jun 2, 2009)

I thought you were about to say the world is your audience on an internet forum. Some use it to good effect (for good discussion) and others not so much.

As for music being a 'message to the world', that sounds a bit inflated. And I would be performing somebody else's work anyway so it would be originally the thoughts and feelings of the composer but given my own slant and of that of others performing with me if it was for more than one musician.

Very hard to say what piece. If just me on my own maybe Beethoven's 30th sonata.


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## sospiro (Apr 3, 2010)

science said:


> You can play any instrument or you could sing, absolutely as well as you'd like. You can perform solo or with your fellow world-class musicians.
> 
> But you only get to perform one thing. One work.
> 
> ...


What a fabulous thought.

I would sing Tosca. Ildebrando D'Arcangelo would be Scarpia and Andrew Richards would be Cavaradossi.


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## tdc (Jan 17, 2011)

That is a hard decision. Id say ideally Id like to be performing/or conducting one of my own pieces that hasnt yet been written! 

In hypothetical anythings possible land there are countless great choices but Id say for solo instrument performance --> J.S. Bach's Passacaglia and Fugue in C minor would be amazing.

For a collaborative work Id love to take part in something like Mahler's 2nd symphony.


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## Edward Elgar (Mar 22, 2006)

Too hard. I'd choose something virtuosic because I can play easy stuff on the violin and piano.

A shortlist for me would be:

Tchaikovsky - Violin Concerto
Brahms - Piano Concertos
Rachmaninov - 2nd or 3rd Piano Concertos

I also dream of being able to play a rock hard contemporary piece like:

Ligeti - Desordre
Xenakis - Tetras (1st violin)
Berg - Violin Concerto

And the winner is... Brahms Piano Concerto No. 2


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## Manxfeeder (Oct 19, 2010)

If you consider a baton an instrument, I'd conduct Bruckner's 8th symphony to remind the world there's still hope despite all the trouble.


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## Edward Elgar (Mar 22, 2006)

If I could conduct any piece it would be Symphonie Fantastique.

Aramis would have had something to say about this, poor fellow.


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## Charon (Sep 8, 2008)

Interesting question. May we conduct?

I would choose to perform Mozart's 20th piano concerto as soloist. 

If I could conduct... I think I would choose a symphony by either Beethoven, Mozart or Mahler. I think I would choose Mahler 4 or 5.


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## SuperTonic (Jun 3, 2010)

As a cellist, I'd love to be able to play the Dvorak concerto.

But I think my ultimate dream would be to conduct a world class orchestra in a performance of Mahler 2.


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## myaskovsky2002 (Oct 3, 2010)

*Lensky*

I'd like to sing this:











and after this I'd like to follow Lensky's detiny.

Martin


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## Pieck (Jan 12, 2011)

To play: probably, Tchaikovsky violin concerto.
To conduct: maybe Dvorak 9th, or Brahms 3rd


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## Webernite (Sep 4, 2010)

Edward Elgar said:


> And the winner is... Brahms Piano Concerto No. 2


I'm with you on that one, except I think I'd perform it on an old straight-strung piano of the sort Brahms played for much of his life. Apparently, as an old man, he specified that modern Steinways should be used when performing his concertos; but in my experience, some of the quirkier passages in his piano writing often make a lot more sense on the instruments he knew best, with their thinner sound and clearly delineated bass notes.

I don't think there's ever been a period recording of the Second Piano Concerto, so it would be a fascinating experiment if nothing else! 

Now, if I had to conduct something, I think I'd probably choose Beethoven's Eighth, which (between me, Beethoven and George Bernard Shaw) is very much better than the Seventh.


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## Nix (Feb 20, 2010)

I would love to perfectly be able to play Bach's 6th cello suite, as well as Brahms 2nd piano concerto (which now perusing upward seems to be a popular choice).


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## Weston (Jul 11, 2008)

I would play the final fugue from _Die Kunst der Fuge,_ what I think of as "Contrapuntus Interruptus," (Contrapunctus XIV) four voice quadruple fugue. I'd probably use a piano or some multitimbral synthesizer of the future. That sudden ending is one of the more powerful statements in music, however unplanned.


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

To play - something on organ. To conduct - something with string orchestra. But I don't play or conduct anything, so it's just a fantasy, of course...


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## Air (Jul 19, 2008)

Busoni, the mighty Piano Concerto. I need all the luck I can get.

I would also love to do the Commendatore scene as Don Giovanni. Or conduct the last movement of the Jupiter (looking like a complete and total idiot).


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## emiellucifuge (May 26, 2009)

If I finally managed to compose a momentous orchestral work I was very happy with I would conduct it


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## HarpsichordConcerto (Jan 1, 2010)

I don't know. I guess Bach's _Goldberg Variations_ on a double-manual French period harpsichord.


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## jhar26 (Jul 6, 2008)

Anything for four hands with Martha.


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## Huilunsoittaja (Apr 6, 2010)

science said:


> You can play any instrument or you could sing, absolutely as well as you'd like. You can perform solo or with your fellow world-class mucisians.
> 
> But you only get to perform one thing. One work.
> 
> ...




It would STILL be:

Poem for Flute and Orchestra by Griffes. It's 100% me.


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## Manxfeeder (Oct 19, 2010)

Air said:


> Busoni, the mighty Piano Concerto. I need all the luck I can get.


Wow. Kudos for letting your imagination go for broke. :tiphat:


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## Niebolaz (Jul 9, 2009)

I would conduct Janacek's Taras Bulba. Preferably, at the end (while hysterically crying) I would be kidnapped by a bunch of rusalkas and forever disappear in the dark depths of bohemian forests (I cannot help myself romanticizing these sort of fantasies).


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## emiellucifuge (May 26, 2009)

So.. you have the chance to tell the world one great thing, and most of you would tell them something they'd already heard before?


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## Lipatti (Oct 9, 2010)

Sure, but they haven't heard ME playing it


I would've probably picked the St Anne Prelude and Fugue by Bach on organ, because it is such a mighty, fantastic piece and it made such an impression on me when _I_ heard it for the first time in a church some years ago.


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

I think my answer is that I'd play Rachmaninov's 2nd piano concerto. Or the violin in Bruch's 1st concerto. Or the clarinet in Brahms' quintet.... No easy answer to this for me. 

I wouldn't care about the novelty of the work. To me the thrill would be to be a conduit for such beauty.


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## starry (Jun 2, 2009)

emiellucifuge said:


> So.. you have the chance to tell the world one great thing, and most of you would tell them something they'd already heard before?


Most people here aren't composers of music, or do you want them to imagine that? And classical music isn't listened to by most people in the world so it would be a new piece to most anyway.


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## Chi_townPhilly (Apr 21, 2007)

science said:


> ...you only get to perform one thing. One work.
> 
> It is your moment, your message to the world.
> 
> What do you choose to perform?


Would like to conduct the reference-recording of Wagner's *Die Walküre*. To me, there's no consensus front-runner rendition of this music-drama... but I can fantasize that there would be upon the conclusion of my labor-of-love...


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## World Violist (May 31, 2007)

Maybe if I can conduct Bruckner 8 well enough it will bring about world peace.

However, I couldn't restrict myself to that unless the specified outcome were realistic. Therefore I'd probably choose an opera I somehow manage to write. I'm much too "hands-on" to just compose it.


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