WIND REPERTOIRE FOR ORCHESTRAL CONDUCTORS
Revised November 2008    

Very often coaches and conductors are seeking wind ensemble music either to play while the strings are tackling the Tchaikovsky,  Dvorak or Elgar Serenades, or to use in rehearsal time which is being spent by string coaches on bowings and fingerings. There is now a vast range of repertoire for the large scale wind ensemble to add to the perennial favourites by Mozart, Beethoven, Dvorak, Strauss and Stravinsky. A list of over 600 works from septets to works such as the Stravinsky Symphony of Wind Instruments and the Strauss Symphonies, compiled by the conductor/composer Leroy Osman, is available on my website in the files Repertoire > Chamber Music > Chamber Music 2

 BIBLIOGRAPHY

Some Useful Publications:

Two books to be recommended very highly to your library for purchase are:

An Annotated Guide to Wind Chamber Music by Rodney Winther, published Warner

Best Music for Chorus & Wind by Keith Kinder, published Manhattan Beach Music

There is a magnificent annotated bibliography of works for double wind quintet  by Catherine Gerhart email gerhart@u.washington.edu which you can find online by browsing DOUBLE WIND QUINTET

SOME WORKS FOR MIXED CHORUS AND WIND

  RECOMMENDED LARGE-SCALE CHAMBER WORKS    

FOR THE LIBRARY
For your library, there is an excellent new publication from the Donald Hunsberger Wind Library, published by Warner Bros called AN ANNOTATED GUIDE TO WIND CHAMBER MUSIC For Six to Eighteen Players by Rodney Winther. Hundreds of works are included, from the little J C Bach Symphonies of 1778 for wind sextet, right through to Xenakis, Fricker and Sir Peter Maxwell Davies. For each work, we are given date of composition, duration, performance difficulty, discography and a general biography and programme note, often leading on towards other discoveries. This is an incredible resource, and will repay the initial investment in opening up a huge new repertoire. Another standard reference book for Wind Ensemble must be The Wind Ensemble Catalog compiled by Jon Gillaspie, Marshall Stoneham and David Clark, published by Greenwood Press, and a mine of information.

 LIST FOR FUTURE PROGRAMMING
I have included a few works for double quintet, including perennial favourite Old Wine in New Bottles by Gordon Jacob, with optional contrabassoon and pair of trumpets, and two examples of the excellent pieces by Jean Françaix. These include great miniature concerti for various instruments including trumpet, double bass and viola. I have added two examples of the 300 American Wind Symphony commissions by Robert Boudreau, published by Peters, by Eugene Bozza and Colin McPhee for orchestral wind brass and percussion , and three towering masterpieces of the 20^th century by Fricker, Maconchy and Stravinsky.  There are three very useful works for orchestral wind and brass by Edward Gregson;  Metamorphoses is an excellent introduction to contemporary techniques for players and audience. Finally I think that the van Otterloo Sinfonietta is a wonderful piece for training a wind section, and to go with the two smaller works of Richard Strauss, you can now add Adam Gorb’s  tricky Symphony No 1 in C, written in hilarious homage to Beethoven’s own first.