One that I have come across (and panicked about):
Veni Veni Emmanuel - James MacMillan
This is a fantastic percussion concerto that we played at university (with the composer present - we were the first people to perform it without Evelyn Glennie (for whom it was written) as the soloist).
It ends with the chorale Veni Veni Emmanuel, kicking off with the first trumpet entering on the B above the stave (C trumpet part) marked
pp!
This comes at the end of a piece that has taken you throughout the range of the instrument and utilising dynamics right up to
ff!
During rehearsals I had splattered that note over each and every wall of every practice room and rehearsal venue
, so I had chosen to play it on piccolo (as opposed to the Bb I was using for the rest of the piece - not owning a C trumpet at that point), just to be certain of hitting it accurately. During the final rehearsal, Mr MacMillan was present and afterwards he came up to me and said "very nice, but no." When I asked which particular place, he said that had written the part for the bigger trumpet - he wanted that particular timbre, not the piccolo trumpet. This was hours before the concert.
It actually went really well (and I got a compliment from him afterwards), but I was quite worried about that particular entry.
You also need to be able to play bells at
pp in this piece, but this is hardly the forum for discussing percussion techniques
