Many of you may not have been aware that over the past two weeks I’ve been preparing for an audition for the Seattle Symphony this past weekend (April 19-21). The orchestra had two vacancies, for Assistant principal (2nd chair) and section.
As a relatively young person (38) but also a person who is a good deal older than most active auditioners (mid to late 20’s), I have been wondering about my competetiveness in the audition scene these days. Over the past five seasons or so I’ve taken two auditions, both for the Philadelphia Orchestra, and I did not progress beyond the preliminary rounds. The last time I progressed to the semi-finals was in Minnesota back in 2000 or so, and I’ve only made the finals once: for my current job. I’ve written about this before, but being in your late 30’s to late 40’s in an orchestra is a confusing time. You’re not one of the hot young turks who’ve beat out dozens of other hot prospects to win the latest audition, but you’re also not one of the elder statesmen who are a few years away from hanging up the axe, either. Often, you’re at the top of your game – at that crucial juncture where your experience has caught up with your technique, and your technique hasn’t yet begun to fade. In short, it’s that time when you’re prone to worry about your usefulness and how your skill set really compares with the younger set, and it has brought on many a mid-life crisis (a bit early, I know) for many an orchestral musician.
So when the opening in Seattle came up, I immediately applied, figuring that it would be a good test of where my playing is at these days. It’s no secret that playing in an orchestra can take its toll on your level of playing – intonation suffers, rhythm can become a bit soft – all because you’re playing with 85 other musicians who all have varying degrees of both pitch and rhythmic accuracy. The great violinist and concertmaster Joseph Silverstein famously remarked that one must practice three hours for every hour spent in an orchestra, just to negate the effects of playing in an orchestra – and in his case he was referring to the Boston Symphony!
The crazy thing about my deciding to do this audition was that I’d already scheduled a major recital for 10 days before the audition date, and all of my attentions were going towards the recital, the excerpts would get their due after the recital was over, and not before, aside from doing some cursory reviews of fingerings and bowings of the excerpts.
I’d never devoted so little time to an audition before. My usual routine was to start in-depth practicing about 5 weeks out from the date of the audition, using that lead time to play for colleagues and possibly a prior teacher and do mock auditions to work out the kinks. I’d have no time for all of that this time around. I hadn’t made it out of the prelims since the Minnesota assistant principal auditions of 1999 or 2000, so I was anxious at least to make it into the semi-final round. That was as much as I was willing to hope for. If I could show I was still competetive, then I would be satisfied.
The 10 days between my recital and the audition were murder – especially the two days after the recital. There is a syndrome well known to all musicians: it’s called the post-recital slump. You get up the morning after a recital and you are unable to make a good sound, play a whole-note in tune, or get your fingers to move much faster than a quarter-note. This is not where you want to be 10 days before a major audition! I was thrown into a deep pit of despair, but diligent work – even when it hurt like hell to the very core of my soul – brought me back to where I’d been before the recital. It’s a mysterious phenomenon, but working when you least want to and pushing through the inevitable dips of the performance cycle is the quickest way I know to acheiving real progress.
So anyway, I worked up my three solo pieces (Bach d minor Prelude, Hindemith Der Schwanendreher 1st mvt, and Mozart Sinfonie concertante 1st mvt) and the collection of solo and tutti orchestral excerpts that made up the list. Some never felt too bad, others resisted all best efforts to tame them, and so it was a mixed bag in my excerpts quiver as I drove up to Seattle this past Friday afternoon.
To be continued…
8 replies on “auditioning for middle-farts”
A Good (Beginning of an) Audition Story…
I wonder how it will end? Charles Noble is writing about his recent audition experience Hmmm….
Well, my magic eight ball seems to think you will win the job. The eight ball is rarely wrong.
Random question – when auditioning with something like the Sinfonia Concertante, how do you handle the rests where the violin is playing and you aren’t? Do you stand there silently, hearing the violin part in your head and come in at the proper time, or do you just pause briefly before starting your next passage? Or does it just depend on how long the rest would be? Like if it’s more than 2 measures, don’t count it out?
Also, is it generally better to audition with well-known pieces like the Mozart, Hindemith, Bartok, Walton, etc. than with pieces like Bruch’s Romanze, the Vieuxtemps sonata, etc.?
I just skipped the rests, unless they are just a bar or so in length.
Generally the rule of thumb for auditions is this:
1. Fast tempo count up to two bars or so.
2. Slow tempo count up to one bar.
Most orchestras will specify what they want to hear or give you a narrow choice of the most well-known pieces. Generally it’s in your best interest to play something that enables the committee to compare you with the other candidates. Otherwise they tend to get lazy and give up or assume that you couldn’t play the standard works.
Good to know – thanks!
Most orchestral auditions are rigged, highly political, and regardless of screen up/down–they know who they want. The rest is merely window dressing, and a waste of peoples’ valuable time, money, and energy.
Good luck, however, like the tax system in USA, it’s rigged.
Thomas G – I couldn’t agree with you less! Having sat on the committee side of the screen many times over the years, I can say that, at least as far as my orchestra goes, we don’t have anyone “preselected”. We might know WHAT we want, but not WHO we want. It’s an important distinction, and one that’s often overlooked. It’s not that no-one qualified applies, it’s that no-one is quite what we’re looking for, if we don’t select someone. I think that, for the most part, this is the case in the vast majority of US orchestras.
Thank you for your comments. Sir, I have also sat on the audition committe screen too for a major symphony orchestra, and yes, they have a few people in mind. And yes, there were flights, hotels, etc… wasting people’s time under the guise that they are selecting the “best” candidate when in fact they already know who they want or studied with who, and who is due this year. That is not saying pre-selecting, rather, the “audition” process is a formality, dog/pony show, it is highly political. Barry Tuckwell, well known hornist also delves into the “audition” process of esteemed orchestras and the politics surrounding “auditions” and/or obtaining a seat.