Just as the title says really, do you think it would be a really bad idea to play the slow movement of Winter unaccompanied? this is for a wedding by the way, in a room of I think about 60 people, although we haven't worked out yet whether they'll be really listening or if it will just be background music.

If the answer's no, any suggestions of anything else that might work? I'm grade 7/8 standard but only have a month to learn it. It would be amazing to play some solo Bach but that seems a bit of a silly idea with such a short timescale!

If you play it well, I'm sure that's an exellent choice.

Plaing it unaccompanied would be fine, just remember without an accompanyment your mistakes will be fairly easy to spot, so it must be absolutely perfect before the performance.

Thanks both of you. What do you think about that compared to playing Meditation from Thais unaccompanied? at first I thought the Massenet would be a much worse piece to play with no accompaniment, but it's occured to me that for people who aren't musicians it's not such a clichéd tune as the Vivaldi.

For anyone who knows the Massenet, do you think it would work to just play up to before the animando (so just the serene opening bit, not the appassionato). I'm not sure if the passionate bit (top of the second page in my edition) would work that well, but it might work even less well to cut the piece in half.

I think the vivaldi is less likely to be well known to the lay public (they only ever know spring...) but the Massenet has been played to death (it actually makes me feel sick when I hear it now!).
If you do decide on the Massenet, I'd stick with the whole thing - it will sound cloyingly sickly without the passionate bit.

How about Shostakovich's "Gadfly"? Or one or two of Bartok's Romanian dances?

Do you have to play unaccompanied? The Vivaldi and Massenet without piano can be quite dangerous as noted by Violin Hero, it makes it that much more difficult. If you decide on the Massenet, do not break it.

I also agree that Bartok's Romanian Dances maybe a better idea. Another idea is a easy(ier) movement from one of the Bach unaccompanied partita? (E major gigue)