The latter. And I've not played that one.. I don't really care for many British composers *ducks and prepares to be flamed*. Though, I am sure that there are a few good things out there that would change my mind. I just haven't gone looking for them.
well worth it, i'd say - VW is one of my favourites. so, what do you play, then?
Well, at the moment I practice etudes. Lots and lots of etudes every day (Sevcik, Wolfahrt, Dont, Mazas, Kreutzer). Those are pretty elementary, but it seems like each time I go back and play them, I get something different out of them that helps my technique (since the notes aren't that hard to figure out anymore). Then I basically play the standard audition repertoirs - I'm trying to get the Mozart G Major concerto and Mendelsohn to sound halfway decent. Also, I play the Bach unaccompanied Sonatas and Partitas and the Paganini Caprices.
At the moment, I also play with a community orchestra and a string quartet with a few of my friends. So I also have my hands full with that. A lot of times, I end up blowing off the orchestra music. I can't really afford to do that with this upcoming concert since all of the music is really quite difficult. It pisses me off, because the last concert we had, the music was easy enough to sight read. It would be nice if maybe the level of difficulty could be spread around so that there was maybe one or two difficult pieces in the concert and I could sightread the rest. Apparently, that makes too much sense to some people
I also play the viola, but I haven't been practicing that lately. I've actually heard that the job outlook is better there, but I don't know how true that is. In any event, I'd like to play the Stamitz D Major concerto - supposedly it's pretty difficult, but from looking at the music it doesn't seem that much worse than Mozart G Major conerto for violin. Also, I think that the Telemann unaccompanied Fantasias are much more beautiful than the Bach unaccompanied sonatas and partitas for the violin, and probably comperable in their technical demands.
Now, my biggest problem with the violin is that you need to be somewhat disinhibited yet highly technical to pull off some of the pyrotechnics. I've not bee able to figure out how to do that. This is why the viola is somewhat more appealing to me. I was actually the principal violist with the university's orchestra when I was going there. I've also played in a string quartet before. The parts were easy enough, but had to be played very precisely. In some regards it was easier, but in other ways it was like performing surgery - it required lots of precision, which worked well with the fact that my playing is very inhibited.
