by Eric Awuy

Orchestra playing requires different approaches and abilities than what is usually needed when performing as a soloist. The most different aspect about playing in an orchestra is the ability to communicate, listen and an overall consciousness about the musical and technical outcome in an ensemble format.

What and how any player of the orchestra should play his/her music parts depends on the how is the music is currently played, how it should be played and in what direction it should go. Every player has to some extend, an influence to the general outcome of the performance.

When an orchestra is trying to find musicians either as additional players or to fill in a vacant position, there are specific areas where the performance of a musician will be tested and carefully monitored. There are different methods for auditioning players, the tryout method (playing with the orchestra) and the single/private audition method. Both method have each positive and negative aspects and it is not uncommon for orchestras to adopt both methods when looking for a suitable player.

In the present days, due to time and budgetary constraint, the most common way of accepting musicians in an orchestra is the private/single audition method. Whatever the method used in an audition, an experienced team of evaluators (conductors, audition committe) will have basic guidelines to evaluate the performance of the orchestra candidate.

Basic Audition Performance Criteria

In an audition performances, the evaluators will generally listen and monitor important playing abilities that are interlinked and can be categorized. For an successful audition, a player will have to master every aspect of his/her playing according to four basic criteria:

• Tone
• Rhythm
• Pitch
• Style and Musicality

1. Tone

Description: the quality of the sound produced by the musician.

The first thing anybody will hear from a player is the quality of sound produced. This is also what any audience will mostly remember after a performance as the sound we produce from our instrument is the individual print (like fingerprints) we leave on any performance. The quality of the produced sound is what is important in an audition. The evaluators will judge the player from this criteria as to:

Was the sound enjoyable?

Was it an open and flowing sound?

Was it tight?

Etc.

The evaluation committee usually listen for a nice and open sound as a basic tone production criteria.

2. Rhythm

Description: the precision and the steadyness of the rythm and pulse of a particuliar music.

rhythm in a general definition can be divided into: the flow of rhythm (pulse) and the ryhtmic pattern. The rhythm flow or pulse can be describe in a more popular term as the beat. Music will always have a certain pulse or beat, wheter it is a sustain long note or a repeating note. The important aspect about pulse/ beat is it’s steadyness. Whenever we play we must be conscious about the steadyness of the overall music. The evaluators will judge the player from this criteria as to:

Was the player slowing down?

Was the player rushing?

Another definition of rhythm, is the rhythm pattern. In an ensemble playing, the precision of rhythm is of the outmost importance. rhythm pattern is absolute and mathematical. Every beat will be subdivided and each subdivision must be played strictly; there are no interpration (unless marked) to how a rhythm should be played. In a sense it is the easiest aspect of playing music as there are no compromise, but also it is one of the hardest as the precision of rhythm requires many hours of diligent practice.The evaluators will judge the player from this criteria as to:

Was the rhythm correct?

Was the rhythm precise?

3. Pitch

Description: the quality and precision of pitch of the notes beeing played

Pitch is also know as playing in tune. A beautiful performance can be ruined if the player does not play in tune, as it will give the audience a sense of unfocused playing. We can compare to watching a two hour movie, but the image is out of focus. Rarely will there be anyone left watching the movie more than five minutes.

Playing out of tune will have the same effect to the audience even if the listener is not trained to recognized an out-of-tune performance. Pitch tuning dramatically affects the clarity of a performance. The evaluators will judge the player from this criteria as to:

Was it in tune?

Can the player tune himself?

4. Style and Musicality

Description: the awareness of the specific style of the music beeing performed and the individual music interpretation.

After meeting the three criteria previously mentioned, the Style and Musicality criteria will be the one that differentiate good players from great players. In an audition, the evaluators are not looking for a soloist, but for a player that is style conscious. A player must be able to define general music style according to the great periods (Renaissance, Baroque, Classical, Romantic, Contemporary), and be able to play the music accordingly. In a higher level, the player will show an ability to play in a specific composer’s style. There are generally already accepted style as Mozart style, Beethoven style, Tchaikovsky style, Stavinsky style, etc. Knowing and the ability to play the music in a correct style is showing that the player is well educated.

The next criteria in this section, is about how the player interprets a certain passage. With the correct style attained, the player should be able to put in a personnal interpration. These are detailed work, according to phrases, dinamics markings, tempo changes, etc...All of the performance should not feel mechanical as if a robot is playing.

The evaluators will judge the player from this criteria as to:

Was it in the correct style?

Was it musical?

Was there something interesting musically?

Summary

Performing for an audition is not a typical musical situation compared to performing in a concert. The orchestra audition is aimed at finding a player with the best ability for playing in an ensemble according to defined criterias. There are other criteria that may or may not influence the success of an audition, but those criteria depends entirely on individuals and different orchestra styles. When preparing for any audition, the above guidelines are by no means the only criterias that a player must prepare for, but is a guideline to how and what is generally beeing evaluated during an audition. Performing in an audition takes courage and a lot of discipline, by knowing and applying these criteria while preparing, a candidate will find that he or she will have more luck in getting accepted in an orchestra