Orchestral auditions: 4 tips
As a 31-year old violinist, I’ve gained some experience doing violin competitions in my student years, and doing concertmaster auditions in the last couple years. While it’s not possible to participate in competitions at my current age anymore (and I really don’t mind!), I am currently bearing the responsibilities of a 2. interim concertmaster with the Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich (where I first started in 2021 as a 1. violinist), while maintaining an active solo career. I am also continuing to learn and improve myself from my ongoing concertmaster-audition experiences.
In a professional environment, one needs to be much more efficient with certain tasks and increasing responsibilities, and fulfilling what is expected from oneself with excellence, which is my goal. I found this to be true, regardless of being a full-time violin professor, an orchestra musician or a world-traveling soloist.
While I certainly don’t have all the answers to every aspiring violinist (claiming otherwise would be disrespectful to my teachers and older colleagues, who have accumulated much more wisdom than me), I feel I could give those some tips on how to prepare for auditions and competitions. In my experience, the preparation style for both are slightly different, but there are quite a few overlaps.
In this post, I will focus on auditions. Below, you can find my four general tips for preparing auditions. You can take what works for you and leave the rest, of course.
1. Develop your musical understanding. This is more of a long-term process, but one needs to get an idea about how the orchestra (to be auditioned for) interprets the staple works of orchestral repertoire (works by Mahler, Brahms, Strauss, Beethoven etc). Orchestras such as the Berlin Philharmonic, Bavarian Radio Symphony, New York Philharmonic, or my own Tonhalle-Orchester (just to name a few) have their traditions and always striving to grow with their chief conductors. They are paving the way for the next generations, and contributing to the everdeveloping, communal musical understanding.
2. Listen to quality recordings of such orchestras. With Spotify and YouTube, it is very easy to expose yourself to different interpretations. No excuses here.
3. Know the whole piece, not just the excerpt. One mistake that I would want to avoid is not knowing the whole piece. If you need to play the Don Juan excerpt by R. Strauss, listen to the whole Don Juan. Read the story about it (how and where it was composed, under whose influence Strauss was etc). Don’t leave it at just preparing the two pages of excerpt.
4. Start learning the works before getting invited to an audition. Buy the excerpt books and read (play) all of them in advance. Write your fingerings and have them ready. This will save you practicing time after you get an invitation.
Do you have any other tip you would add to the list above, or anything else you want me to talk about? Please let me know in the comments.
