Standard bass solo rep

[EllaRubin]

What are the top 5 or so standard bass solo works that almost everyone plays?

[MStarke]

If you mean bass trombone with piano accompanyment I would say:

Lebedev Concerto
Sachse Concertino
Bozza New Orleans
Lots of others

These first three are AFAIK still the typical audition stuff, so also most frequently played by serious players.

[GabrielRice]

Assuming you mean bass trombone...many of these are transcriptions:

Lebedev Concerto in One Movement (#1)
Bozza New Orleans
Sachse Concertino (very commonly used as required solo in European auditions)
Ewazen Concerto

then there are a bunch of pieces that lots of people play but aren't quite so ubiquitous:

Lebedev Concert Allegro
Wilder Sonata
Spillman Concerto
Spillman Two Songs
Gordon Jacob Cameos
Koetsier Allegro Maestoso
Handel Sonata in F
Lieb Concertino Basso
Hidas Rhapsody
Hidas Meditation
Donald White Tetra Ergon
Vaughan Williams Tuba Concerto
Brahms Four Serious Songs

[EllaRubin]

Thanks! And yes, bass trombone.

[LeTromboniste]

I'll mention one that is 100% not a standard at this time – but that it is a baffling mystery to me why not, seeing as it is the very earliest solo piece for trombone we know of, and it's both extremely virtuosic and very beautiful.

Rognoni's Susana d'Orlando (diminutions on Lasso's Susanne ung jour)

https://imslp.org/wiki/Susana_d'Orlando ... Francesco)

[Johnstad]

As performed on Jeff Reynolds' Album, The Big Trombone!

[robcat2075]

I was once told on the internet that everyone played Walter S. Hartley's "Sonata Breve" but that was years ago and I don't know that everyone still says everyone plays that.

It has the redeeming quality of being unaccompanied and is successful at that. It worked well for me as an audition piece and I liked that when i played it... nothing was missing. No one had to imagine absent piano tremolos or oohm-pahs.

On the downside, it's an atonal piece and I get that those are no longer novel or compelling.

I sense that playing a movement from a Bach cello suite is taking up the space that something like "Sonata Breve" used to occupy at bass trombone hearings.