Klarinet Archive - Posting 000321.txt from 1995/09

From: bassethn@-----.ORG
Subj: Orchestral excerpts
Date: Thu, 14 Sep 1995 09:46:39 -0400

On 09-13-95, Christopher Zello wrote:

Ic> Very often today the competition for jobs is so keen that it isn't
Ic> wise to walk into an audition playing anything other than the
Ic> articulations on the page. This is something a committee could
Ic> count you out for (as well as a million other things). Do anyone
Ic> else feel this way?

A good committee auditing players for a position in a good orchestra would
not, in my opinion, count you out if there were a few articulation
discrepancies. If it really bugged them, they'd ask you (or should ask
you) to play at again and mind the articulation. That comment would be a
big clue to the candidate to maybe play from the parts provided by the
orchestra (not your own parts so as to avoid the problem Chris Zello
mentions) and *play the articulation that is on the page*. If you failed
to comply at that point, I suspect that you'd be toast.

A good audition committee *will* eliminate players *immediately* if the
candidate is not playing in time and/or in tune. A committee need not ask
for those things -- you rarely get a second chance to play in time and in
tune. (Most auditors just tune out, pardon the pun -- the downside of
listening to 25-100 candidates playing the same excerpts.) Bad pitch and
bad time are fundamentals for orchestral playing (indeed, any playing).
It is surprising and disturbing the number of perceived good candidates
who come in and don't play in tune and/or in time.

A good committee wants to hear a player that they can hire NOW. A good
candidate will make the committee's job easy. Committees are not looking
to humiliate candidates -- it's agonizing on both sides of that screen.
As a committee member, you really want a candidate to make your job as
simple as possible. Play great and let the committee give you the job.

By the way, the following is a list of clarinet exerpts that would tell
any good committee if you can play:

Beethoven 6 (maybe 4 too)
Brahms 3
Mendelssohn Scherzo
and possibly
Schubert Unfinished

That's all I'd need, anyway. After that,

Rimsky Korsakov Scherazade, Cappriccio Espagnol
Ravel Daphnis

In my opinion, you just don't need a zillion excerpts to figure out if a
candidate can play in time, in tune and play music while doing those
things. In fact, the second movement of Beethoven 6 could tell you
*everything*.

=========================================
David Bourque
Bass Clarinet, Toronto Symphony Orchestra
Internet: bassethn@-----.org
=========================================

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