What do Conductors want to Hear?

For the body of this post we go way back in the archives to the first year of the Horn Notes Blog. Conductors are an enigma in many ways. Certainly they really want the right notes, but there is more to it than that. Back on 8/27/2004 I posted another insight into what they are looking for which it might be timely to consider again as besides this being prime season for performances there are a number of auditions underway for schools, summer programs, etc. I have a few more new comments at the end of this post as well.

I was talking to a friend, a professional trumpet player, this past weekend and he brought up an interesting point/question–what do conductors want to hear? As horn players we can all come up with one answer really quickly, the right notes!! But he had a deeper answer which I suggested to all the horn students I worked with last week preparing for ensemble placement auditions which was helpful I believe in making the auditions the strongest I have heard from the ASU horn studio to date.

So, what is the answer? What do conductors want to hear? Conductors want to hear your interpretation. Really, it can even be an interpretation that a horn player might consider to be odd or flawed in some way but a conductor will accept it as being your interpretation and may buy it. At least you didn’t sound bland.

If you focus on communicating an interpretation in an audition this can be a major key to actually getting your musical point across to a listener and not sounding generic or overly conservative. My point last week was not to tell ASU horn students to do my interpretation, playing like musical parrots, but instead to get an interpretation across to the conductors that you are in fact playing for. There were students who sounded relatively more aggressive and more refined in approach but at least they all had an approach!! No one was in the “bland” range that we hear much too often in auditions.

Besides ensemble placements at schools, summer festival placements are also usually chosen by conductors. Want to win a slot? Give the conductor an interpretation! At most every professional orchestral job the winner is chosen essentially by the conductor in the final round. Yes, conductors want to hear the right notes for sure. But always give them an interpretation.

Following up further, I have tried lots of different ways to communicate to students that you have to have character in your playing. Bland is bland! Who likes bland horn playing? While in the end a conductor might actually prefer bland but accurate performance with good rhythm, try always to show more.

Recently also in studio class the topic of compression in recordings was mentioned. Recordings do give a false impression of the range of dynamics you need to master as soft and loud are modified in mastering to create a product that is closer to mid range dynamic all the time. This is why it is really important to actually hear live, professional horn players from time to time to have an accurate impression of the dynamics you need to actually master fully. That you have these dynamics mastered does not mean you blare away all the time either, it just means that you have the full range of dynamics ready in any situation so that you can easily give a conductor any interpretation they want.