Klarinet Archive - Posting 000704.txt from 2001/03

From: EstradaMC@-----.com
Subj: [kl] Orchestra Auditions and The Phoenix Symphony
Date: Wed, 28 Mar 2001 05:12:12 -0500

antoine@-----.net writes
<<Hi all I am a grad student and I have noticed that I don't see a lot of

clarinetist my age talking on the list. If this is a wrong assumption I am

sorry. But I rarely see topics that deal with the things that I am facing in

grad school. For example learning excerpts.>>

This letter has inspired me to write, which is a rarity on this list. I
guess I have felt similar frustrations with subjects discussed, sometimes ad
nauseum on this list, but that is the nature of his kind of list. As I'm
sure the list managers can confirm, we've beaten just about every subject on
the list like a dead horse, and that would include auditions, their nature,
their subjectiveness, their politics and the study of excerpts. To the grad
student who wrote, I would encourage you to continue to probe your teacher's
brain for the answers you seek. That's why you're paying the tuition right?
Also, play for people who are currently taking auditions and succeeding at
either winning them, or at least making it to the last call.

Rather than express my views on the subject of the performance and study of
excerpts I'll give you a recent audition experience. As some of you might
know, the Phoenix Symphony recently held an audition for principal clarinet.
The usual application process produced a pool of about 65 clarinetists. A
somewhat small group I might add, given the numbers of clarinetists out
there. The position paid roughly $40,000 a year. Since Phoenix is rather
remote for most of the country, outside of the West coast, the smaller than
average turnout, might not be surprising. Also, several people might perhaps
be leery of the past financial history of the organization, which only
recently signed a contract taking their musicians salaries into peer status
with similar metropolitan areas. My theory for their low turn out was the
poor choice of repertoire that made up the audition list. The list was
lengthy and filled with certain standouts. The first being their decision to
include two concerti, the complete Weber Second concerto in addition to the
standard Mozart (both to be accompanied by piano, or so indicated in the
mailings). The list of excerpts was lengthy but fairly standard with a few
extras: Rossini's Overture to La Gazza Ladra, Smetana's Bartered Bride
Overture, and Weber's Overture to Der Freischutz.

For the first round the committee chose to listen to the exposition of the
first movement of the Weber. You haven't been in hell until you've heard ten
or so clarinetists in various warm-up rooms playing that opening passage,
each one trying to play louder and faster than their neighbors. After the
Weber the candidates were asked to play the Mendelssohn Scherzo, but rather
than ask the candidates to play the first 30 or so bars, which is the
standard practice, they wanted just to hear the tonguing passages. So they
bracketed certain measures they wanted to hear, never more than 8 continuous
bars. Sometimes requesting you to play just two bars and then skip ahead 2
bars and play 2 more bars and then again stop and skip 5 bars then play two
and so on and so forth to the end of the piece. In the time it takes to
reset and play the next passage you could have already played it in rhythm
while at the same time showing the committee your steady pulse. Did the
committee, know what they were doing when they decided to do this? Was it
their attempt to save time, were they convinced that they could accurately
gauge a candidate's ability to articulate the given passages?

The committee chose to listen to Beethoven excerpts and Mozart in the next
round and at the conclusion of the audition, the Phoenix Symphony decided not
to hire anyone, but rather to redo the audition. I hope they learned
something. The fact that they found no one came as no surprise to most of my
friends and colleagues that took the audition, they seemed to be of the same
mind set often saying "well, they didn't know what they wanted, and they
didn't know what to ask?"

So, did their choice of Weber in the first round yield a pool of candidates
that perhaps didn't best exemplify what is required to play in an American
wind section? Will they get a larger and more "talented" pool of candidates
when they hold the audition again in the fall? Should I be practicing right
now instead of writing this? Does the Met committee really want to hear I
Vespri Siciliani at dotted quarter = 84? I'll bet Riccardo has something to
do with that tempo marking. I digress......

Yours in good humor,
Mario Estrada
Florida West Coast Symphony

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