I must say, I love the contrabass clarinet and the bass oboe.
Both are used in Thomas Adès's Asyla.
I don't have a favourite though. I can think of great solos for all these instruments, and if used in such a way, playing music of a suitable quality, all of them sound very expressive and highly effective.
I love the oboe. That kind of nasally, but flowing tone it produces is just beautiful. I would really like to learn how to play one, but the instrument itself is very expensive.
It is a very hard choice. I love my recordings of Sharon Kam on the Clarinet. But Karen Geoghegan on the Bassoon opened up a whole new world to me I never knew could exist.
I have never played a wind instrument, apart from the recorder at school obviously, but I would say the flute. It has such a beautiful and relaxing sound.
I voted for flute, since I'm a flutist and love the instrument anyhow, but will always have the tendency from now on to rebel. I would have voted for clarinet, I think it has a wonderful timbre, and has a deeper emotion than flute. But flutes have the ability to "sing" more than any other instrument.
Bassoon, of course. Followed closely by contrabassoon and oboe, although I love the heckelphone. I'd like to get one some day, but isn't there like 150 in the world?
I've been playing alto sax for 28 years. While the other kids at school were taking up drums and guitar with Van Halen and John Bonham as their role models I was a precocious freak more inspired by my dad's collection of Art Pepper and Stan Getz albums and I've played semi-pro on and off ever since. Still my fave of all instruments not just wind, with soprano sax, tenor sax not far behind.
I didn't used to like the soprano as much as tenor and alto, and it seemed to be too clsely connected to smooth jazz, but John Coltrane, Anthony Braxton, Gary Bartz, John Surman and Dave Liebman changed my mind. Its sound is like an alto crossed with a suona or zurna, which I think gives it a inherent Eastern/Asian sound.
Tenor sax is probably my favourite. I think it has the greatest dynamic range, with an incredibly elegent pristine sound at one extreme and diaphragm busting honks and howls at the other. Saying that, the alto and tenor are much closer in timbre than the soprano so either could work well in most situations.
I like flute these days in Beethoven symphonies so voted for flute. I don't like it so much as a solo instrument, however. For solo, I prefer clarinet, particularly in Brahms' chamber music.
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