In my years of being on both sides of the audition screen, I have noticed a distinct sense of cross purposes on the parts of the auditioners and the auditionees. With respect to the auditioners, I have often heard words to the effect of:
“The audition committee is looking to eliminate; with so many candidates, their goal is to make the numbers smaller.”
or maybe,
“With so much competition, a candidate has to play perfectly or they will be excused.”
or even this
“Auditions are a complete ‘crap shoot’; there's no way to be able to read the committee’s minds and so you just need to take millions of auditions and with the law of the odds, you will eventually win one.”
While I don't argue with the fact that there are a lot of flutists out there taking auditions and the competition is fierce, I am inclined to consider a different tack.
First-of-all, the committee is looking for a musician to fill a vacancy in their orchestra. They are looking for the very best player who can 1. handle the job as described and 2. fit into the existing section. As a committee member myself, I have listened to each candidate with an open mind (and ears) always in the hope that I will be entertained and thrilled by the performing candidate. It is never true for me that I want to eliminate a candidate. I wish for the next musician to be the one we hire. Keeping in mind that a committee is looking for the very best player, the criterion for judgment is based on an ideal of the perfect musician. Since this does not exist (even in the musicians on the committee!) playing a perfect audition with no mistakes often is not a consideration in and of itself. Gorgeous flexible sound, clear phrasing, control of intonation, dynamics, technique and a good understanding of the larger orchestral context of the excerpts is what the committee is looking for.
With this in mind, I have a small exercise for you to try while you prepare for the next big "cattle call" audition:
Take each excerpt that has been requested for the audition. Make a list of the specific musical and technical difficulties of the excerpt. For instance, for the Afternoon of a Faun opening solo you might make a list that looked a bit like this:
1. rich tone in the low register
2. breathe control
3. subtle phrasing
4. legato
Then, ask yourself these questions:
What is the committee looking for in this specific excerpt?
and
Why is this excerpt on this list?
The answers might be
1. "The committee is looking for a flutist who can take this long, languid phrase and create an organic whole by using a luscious, full but piano middle-low register and draw in the listener from the outset."
2. "This orchestral work begins with the flute solo, so a professional flutist needs to be able to play it with ease and confidence."
There's no right or wrong answers to this exercise. The goal is to make the excerpts your own, to do some digging to find meaning in the notes beyond the purely technical and use this meaning as a vehicle for the technical requirements. We read and hear so many others tell us what we need to do, at some point we must make the performance our own. The finest flutists I have heard in auditions were not those who necessarily played note perfect, but those who made a statement and reached me beyond the screen using their virtuosity to convey the entire orchestral work all by themselves.
