Solo repertoire (Concertos, Sonatas and more)

[Andrew Festa]

I really love the Vanhal Concerto. It's probably my favorite bass concerto.

Some other solo pieces I've done are the Koussevitzky short pieces-They are really fun to play, and not too difficult. The Andante from the short pieces is my favorite out of the four. It’s very beautiful.

Dittersdorf Concerto-I played it in C sounding in D major. It was published by Hoffmeister and came with cadenzas by Miloslav Gadjos. The first movement cadenza that Gadjos wrote is really fun, and the audience loved it at a performance I played it at. I like the edition reading in C better than reading it in D. It makes a lot of the passages easier, but some of the harmonics don’t work, so they have to be transposed down, which I still think sounds fine.

J.C Bach Adagio-This piece is arranged from a Viola Concerto. It's very beautiful and fun to play. It has some difficult passages, but nothing too bad. There’s a great recording out by David Grossman.

Recently, just for fun I started on Sperger's 2nd Concerto in D major. It's published by Hoffmeister. So far it's not too bad. There are a lot of scalular passages, and lots of arpeggios. The cadenzas for this edition were also written by Miloslav Gadjos, but I haven't made it that far yet. Difficulty wise I'd say it's comparable to the Vanhal.