There is just so much crammed into Hymn to St Cecilia! It's particularly satisfying if at the end of 10 minutes you find the pitch hasn't changed at all. A colleague of mine always wants to change "O wear your tribulation like a rose" to "O blow your tribulation like a nose"!

Jaakko Mäntyjärvi's 'El Hambo' is great fun, and allows the performers to clap, stamp and shout as well as singing pseudo-Swedish nonsense. I love many madrigals - one favourite is Morley's 'Fyer, fyer' which is very exciting (especially if one singer gets lost!).

Surely there's a better solution.

Really?  I've never done all of it (only ever did Part the First in a single stretch), but I'd always assumed that if I ever did have to sing the whole damn thing that I'd be ready to hang myself by the end.

I did Messiah so often that I couldn't bear to hear it for about four years afterwards, and then I went to a performance and realised what a great work it truly is.

I once came in a beat early in one of the Amens. I still have no idea why, but I haven't recovered from it yet.

Mahler 2 must be THE most fantastic sing ever. Even just being in the audience for those last five or ten minutes is unlike any other listening experience I have ever had.

Re Berlioz Grande Messe des Morts - the STRANGEST experience I ever had was accompanying a final piano rehearsal with approx 350 singers and not being able to hear myself play at the "4 brass bands" moment in the Dies Irae even though my hands and shoulders were passing through my personal pain threshold. That too must be amazing to sing.

I once dreamt I was singing the Ingemisco from the Verdi Requiem at the ROH...