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Re: Excerpts and tempo

Author: mrn
Date: 2009-04-15 04:43

I have a question about audition excerpts and tempos. For audition purposes, on technical excerpts (in other words, ones which obviously require fast finger work), is it better to play these as fast as possible (so as to show what you are capable of in a technical sense) or to try to choose a tempo that is more along the lines of how you would expect the piece to be played in a performance (thus showing more of your interpretive skill and judgment but perhaps less of your technical abilities)?

The reason why I ask this is that I noticed that some of conservatory students/grads. who auditioned for the YouTube Symphony (I auditioned as an amateur) seemed to me to really push the tempo quite a bit on some of the technical excerpts (the fast sextuplet excerpt from Scheherazade is really what I'm thinking of) compared to what I was used to hearing (the Fritz Reiner/CSO recording of Scheherazade mvt. IV doesn't go that fast, for instance). I was just curious to see if they knew something I don't about this sort of thing. Or maybe I'm just used to hearing relatively "slow" recordings of this piece.

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