- - Please visit: Legacy Horn Experience - -
Recently I was pointed to the blog of Barry Stees, Assistant Principal bassoon of the Cleveland Orchestra and a former colleague of mine at the Brevard Music Center. Two very recent articles caught my attention, related to the second bassoon auditions in the Cleveland Orchestra. A specific topic area that caught my attention was on the solo portion of the audition.
When I played in the Nashville Symphony I observed the same thing: the solo portion of many professional auditions is not often what it needs to be. The way I usually word it is the solo needs to sound magical, but what happens way too often is that the solo drops back into some deep “default mode” that sounds like the player has not worked on it seriously since high school. At the very least too much effort was taken to master the excerpts but not enough to master the solo, as it too often sounds mechanical and etude-like.
Along those same lines, in the first article Sees notes
In addition, there were a number of players who exhibited a rough, percussive style in the Mozart Concerto. Accenting every downbeat, emphasizing bar lines, and using explosive articulation in a piece that has a nobility and grace made the bassoonists on the committee embarrassed at times for the way our instrument was being treated.
In the second article he offers this useful thought.
Even more important, imagine yourself as an ambassador for the music you are playing. You are playing some of the greatest music ever written and it’s your job to show the listeners (even if they are really jaded orchestral musicians) the wonders of what you’ve brought to play.
Thus, the Mozart Concerto becomes a wonderful display of the nobility and grace of the instrument and not a grim minefield of mistakes waiting to be checked off by the committee.
There is much more to be gleaned from each of the articles linked above but I would close again by noting that the concerto must be very well prepared. Besides being completely accurate (if you can’t lay down an entire Mozart exposition with no chips you are not ready for a professional audition) make it musically magic! The Mozart horn concertos are great music and must be prepared to a high default mode in any audition you perform them on. Raise your personal bar. Memorize the Mozart horn concertos, and perform them often.
