Orchestra Audition Preparation: My Experience

An orchestra audition is not too different from a competition or a college music school audition; all have a group of judges who make a decision about your playing. Is it in tune? Is it played with a beautiful sound? Is it rhythmically steady? Is it musically expressive? Is it good enough to get through to the next round? Preparing for an orchestra audition is a long, but necessary, process. The list of music you will need to prepare can sometimes seem a bit daunting. For the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra audition, I had to be ready to play the exposition of a major romantic concerto, the exposition of Mozart’s 4th or 5th concerto, one movement from a Bach solo sonata or partita, and 21 different orchestra excerpts! These repertoire lists change from year to year, but you can bet some of the usual suspects will always be on it. In fact, Alex Kerr, one of my teachers at Indiana University, has an “Excerpt Bible” of pieces likely to be on an audition list.

My first experience with orchestra auditions was at Indiana University. Every year, all the string players audition to get placed in one of five orchestras. This was the first time I had played Strauss’ Don Juan, the Scherzo from Schumann’s 2nd Symphony, the Scherzo from Mendelssohn’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and the finale of Mozart’s Symphony #39. It took me a couple years and more than a couple lessons to get these excerpts in decent shape. As it got closer to my Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra audition, I played my excerpts for as many people as I could. Their reactions and advice helped me realize what I could still improve. Also, I found it extremely helpful to have a mock audition at home every day leading up to the audition. Running through 10 excerpts and my concerto without stopping or warming up in between gave me confidence that I could do the same at the actual audition. But this was only possible after many weeks of slow, careful practice!

We were given 15 minutes to rehearse both the romantic concerto and the Mozart concerto with a pianist. Just playing through both expositions took about 10 minutes, so the plan was to be flexible and responsive in my playing; there wasn’t time to rehearse every detail and transition. The final round consisted of the expositions of both concerti and about 7 more excerpts. After what seemed like an hour of the audition committee deliberating, I was relieved and thrilled to hear that they would love to have me join the MSO in September.