Orchestral excerpts have gone down an interesting path. For those that are taking auditions at the professional level or entry into a music school as a student, they represent rejection or acceptance. This is a job-application attitude which then focuses the approach to these short sound bites, in my view, to the equivalent of looking at taxidermy- dead stuffed animals or butterflies under glass. In other words , something NOT ALIVE!
The preoccupation of making everything sound "mistake free" and spotless shows that the regular "cattle call" auditions are far away from offering an environment that encourages the best out of the player. But that makes sense from the level of looking at the profession itself. Since the virtual reality age where many times we find ourselves reflected by mechanical devices such as very sophisticated tuners, metronomes, videos and all what we see on a computer, we can start to lose touch with the more personal meaning of ourselves being in service to the SPIRIT of the music. But instead, being preoccupied not to mess up.
There is NO substitute for building a real relationship with the music and your instrument's role in the piece. How can a great actor and actress play their role in a [play or movie without knowing the whole story? I'm saying something different than knowing every theoretical aspect of the piece. Without having a feeling, emotion, mental imagery or story, how is it going to sound like anything beyond excellent technique with a planned set of how phrasing should go? Technique + Music = Art.
Ask yourself: "What am I saying in this excerpt?" "What am I communicating?" "What atmosphere is being created?' Then ask about the how, where, when and what that you will need to make it happen. Make the excerpts ALIVE!
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