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MainlyMozartSD OP t1_iqwgwfd wrote

Reply to comment by XomokyH in I'm concertmaster (principal violin) of New York's Metropolitan Opera Orchestra and a professor at Juilliard. Next week, I'll be performing with the Mainly Mozart All-Star Orchestra in San Diego - the largest annual gathering of concertmasters and principal players in North America. AMA! by MainlyMozartSD

Difficulty is always an interesting question, because people typically expect some kind of staggering intellectual or technical difficulty. Pieces of that sort include Berg's Chamber Concerto (where arguably playing the trio version of the Adagio with clarinet and piano, conductorless, was more difficult than playing the complete work), the "Seven Trumpets" from Messaien's Quartet for the End of Time, and Brett Dean's "Hamlet" which we played at the Met last season.

In the end, however, apparently simple pieces of sheer poetry are always more difficult -- Bach, Mozart, Schubert.

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MainlyMozartSD OP t1_iqwhbo9 wrote

In terms of your second question, I have had such moments in the past but I rarely listen just for one moment. I can think of one such example though: when the horn motif in the last movement of Sibelius 5 gets going .....

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