Comments about Audition Excerpts

Dear Clarinet Class:

It is about the time that you should start thinking about the Fall Ensemble Audition packet if you haven't already. Below are several blog entries, one about each excerpt, and I am simply sharing some of the standard issues about these excerpts as they come into my head.

There are probably some very important aspects of these excerpts that I have not mentioned here, and here is where you can take charge of your own education: MAKE COMMENTS! Make the UNCG clarinet community a stimulating place by sharing your two cents. I will try to respond as soon as I can.

Best of luck on the auditions!

Brahms Third Symphony

NOTE: Please ignore the bracket marks on the part. The excerpt you are learning does start on the first bracket mark, but ends on the next page, m. 181. Not necessary to practice the first ending and repeat.

Every year, when talking about excerpts for the ensemble auditions, I am a broken record, I admit it. I always stress the importance of listening to recordings of the whole piece. I always say ESPECIALLY this excerpt. All of the orchestral excerpts here are no different, Brahms 3 ESPECIALLY. The sound and sensibility of this piece is so warm and lyrical, you really need the sound of the whole orchestra in your ear to help mold your clarinet sound and finger movement for these passages.

METER: 9/4, 6/4, these meters can create a gentle flow. Use your air to bring out the beauty of these meters, and notice the passages that Brahms's lines imply 3/2 or emphasizes ties across the barlines. How accentuated should those interesting rhythms be? Use recordings as your guide to answer this question.

REGISTER CROSSINGS: lots of polish needed on the opening solo, usually takes me a few weeks before the musical line is happening without interruption from the technical challenges of the register crossings.

PHRASING: I also use thoughts of phrasing help my register crossings work. Also, plan your breaths carefully in this opening solo. Brahms's style, whether playing the symphonies or the sonatas, is a lot of careful attention to phrasing, not only the larger, macro-level arches, but also the more subtle nuance dynamics that gently bring out the character of the meter signature, and those that happen on the note-to-note level. In other words, once you have learned the notes, keep going, keep thinking about the shaping--how gentle, but interesting can you make it?

m. 46: Count the rests carefully, I count each quarter rest silently to myself. Lots of people shorten one or the other rest, I think it is because of the implied hemiola.

mm. 64–, mm. 173–: These two phrases, really listen to your fingers and make sure that they are moving evenly. If it were me, I would practice a bit of "air clarinet", playing without sound, and really listen carefully to the rhythm between the notes, listen for small moments of rushing, and gradually try to eliminate those.

Ravel Bolero

Context, context, context. Where does this solo come in the arch of the piece? How does this piece work anyway? Many of you may have heard Bolero but you might want to listen to it again, at least the first 4 minutes of the piece. This clarinet solo comes early on, the second soloist. Flute plays first, in the same range as your printed excerpt, which isn't the most projecting range for the flute, and clarinet follows, still very early on in the long building crescendo of the piece.

Keys:

(1) Clean finger connections through register crossings and on the pinky keys.
(2) Warm, unforced sound, mostly soft but not pinched.
(3) Articulation, mm. 11–14, rhythm and style. RHYTHM: after several measures of your rhythm controlled by your fingers, all of a sudden your tongue jumps in for a few measures and contributes to rhythm. Listen to yourself very carefully. Are you REALLY staying in the same tempo when your tongue takes over? STYLE: we want to hear the articulation here, but the style remains gentle and understated. Enough articulation to be heard and sound slightly bouncy, not so much that the sound, mood, and flow of the phrase is compromised.

Here is a version I found on youtube that I liked:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8po7FZonP-I

Prokofiev Peter and the Wolf

OK, so the tests here are (1) technical CLARITY, (2) pacing of an accelerando, understanding your own technical limits and making those work musically, and (3) accomplishment of #1 and #2 through good practice technique.

Some suggestions: I don't have the Hadcock orchestral book in front of me, but I am sure there are some good suggestions there. I recall, for example, that he suggests rethinking the rhythm in the triplet passage to make it easier to execute. My approach: (1) make the staccato at the beginning of the passage sound nervous, shorter than usual. (2) the triplet passage took a lot of repetition for me to get stable. The standard thing to say here is to pace your accelerando, be sure to gain speed gradually so the end of the lick doesn't crash. (3) the grace note passage: I practiced this alot converting all the grace notes into sixteenth notes, played on the beat rather than before the beat. The two measures played as: (1) 2 e + a 3 e + a (4) | (1) 2 e + a 3 e + a 4 e + a | 1 e + a (tie). I used stopped tonguing between each beat, and then when I returned to the printed rhythm, the polish was pretty much there.

About the technical clarity in general, for some reason, players can lose hand position in this excerpt. I think that left hand curving is just one of my personal challenges, but for both of the technical passages, keeping the left hand fingers curved will help the "diction", hearing the desired notes with a minimum of other sounds in between.

And, some comments about the last phrase. Let's think of the imagery here. The cat is scared, quickly climbs the tree, and once reaching a high branch (the high G-flat), his mood switches back to relaxed and confident. I like to play those last four measures as slinky as possible, as an illustration of cat-ego. I have heard many people play this phrase too quickly, without adding much phrasing nuance. Use the tenuto marks hand-written into the music on your pdf as a guide. Find your own way to play it, but think about what mood you want to create and how you are going to create it.

Rose Etude #23

How Much Do You LOVE the Rose Etudes? Here is a photo of my new tattoo:



Standard Rose Etude that gives you a chance to demonstrate articulation, technique, and range. Not that much that needs to be said. Keep this one simple.

Choice of tempo: choose a tempo that not only works for the beginning, but also works for you later in the etude, when the fingerings get more challenging. Faster is not necessarily better, technical stability and resonant sound are important too.

Staccato vs. carets vs. accents: how you handle these differences won't be the most important feature of your audition. For what it is worth, here are my personal definitions of how the caret and accent styles differ from staccato, but you have another interpretation:

caret - harder articulation and more force in the air at the beginning of the note than regular staccato. In modern usage, can mean extra short and dry (like in Stravinsky) but I don't think that is what is meant here.

accent - longer than staccato, air starts stronger than staccato but then air pressure gradually relaxes, an air pressure diminuendo

For those of you who know how to do stopped tonguing, I recommend playing this one that way. My preference might stem from my FSU training with Frank Kowalsky, but nevertheless, I prefer clarity in this etude, some space at the end of slurs is good as long as the last note of the slur is not clipped.

Rimsky-Korsakov Scheherezade

CLARIFICATION: if it were me, I wouldn't print the second page of the Scheherezade excerpts, just the first and third. Would be easier on the trees for you to memorize the first note from page two, the F-sharp, which ends the cadenza that is assigned. . The first excerpt is from the second movement, and the second excerpt is from the fourth movement.

SECOND MOVEMENT CADENZA:

Tempo and dynamic pacing: I like to make each of these three phrases sound louder than the previous, and have more dramatic tempo changes. I underplay the first one a little bit. I accent the first three notes more in the second and do a bit of decresc., play pretty fast in the second. Then in the third, I do as much taper as I can and really take my time building the speed on the last run.

Ending each phrase: in the orchestra, the clarinetist hands off the responsibility to the conductor at the end of each phrase, so figure out a way to play the ritard that is clear for the conductor. In the first two phrases, the last three notes (C - B-flat - A) are often played quite slow. In the last phrase, consider slowing down the last nine notes, the last three triplets, dramatically.

This is a popular and traditional orchestra piece...I suggest listening to a few different recordings to hear how other clarinetists have interpreted this.

LAST MOVEMENT EXCERPT:

Also on A clarinet if you have one.

This excerpt is about evenness of technique, and phrasing in a way that shows the downbeats as well as the overall contour.

PHRASING: For the first eight measures, one way to play it is cresc. for two measures, decresc for two measures (do this twice). In m. 9-16, continue the same dynamics as printed. Another way to consider the first eight measures relates to the rhythm and sound of the underlying chords in the strings, you might also consider three measure crescendo and one measure diminuendo. Listen to a recording or two and do what seems best to you.

TECHNIQUE: Practice slowly, use your practice techniques to get the evenness happening. Concert tempo is in the 80s or 90s for the measure.

PROFESSIONALISM: Practice picking up the clarinet and playing this without practicing it first: see if you can get it the first time. Practice this well in advance of audition day.

Husa Music for Prague

Important wind ensemble excerpt, important one because some of you will take a military band audition some day. This excerpt is for players hoping to land in wind ensemble or orchestra. For those of you who think you will be placed in Symphonic Band of Wind Ensemble, do take a look at this one.

Keys to success:

Articulation: How clean is your articulation on the high G at the beginning? How little and lightly can you move your tongue so that the pitch doesn't waver? Probably doesn't need to sound nice, articulation can have a pointed energy, but ideally, we hear Gs and not other pitches lower than G. Letter A to C, do you have a nice, energized staccato appropriate for the modern style of the piece. Are the accents strong and where they are written?

Steady tempo - keep this one steady, can't find any spots in this excerpt where rubato is likely. Four measures before B would be the only place: important there for the listener to hear the clarion E on beat 2 and then the low F on the next downbeat. You might be able to slow down the tempo for the run here, but only if you are able to phrase really strongly so that we hear the E and then the F in what basically feels like one beat.

Rhythms: Bringing out 3/4 feel when implied (example, second measure of A). Not being late when there are rests on the downbeat.

High note fingerings - might need to use alternate high D-sharp, whatever is more comfortable for you. For high F three measures before B, I would be tempted to overblow clarion A-flat (add third right hand side key, the second one from the top), if it is not too sharp.

Rests: no need to count out the twelve measures or the eight measures.

Bartok Miraculous Mandarin

For those of you around Greensboro this summer, consider attending the Eastern Music Festival performance of this piece, will give you the best idea of the mood and style of this masterwork.

http://www.easternmusicfestival.org/schedule-2011.php#fest

This excerpt is on this list mostly for evaluation of those most qualified for orchestra and wind ensemble. If you don't expect to play in those ensembles next year, you may choose to practice this one the least of all the excerpts.

This piece doesn't get programmed that often, I think because of its PG-13 or R-rated subject matter. It is a "Ballet Pantomime," so meant to be acted on stage as the music is played. In the story (this is close to accurate, but is just how I think of it) is nighttime in an old Eastern European city, of a second-story window on a alley street. The window has thin curtains, easy to see silhouettes through it. The room is lit with mood lighting...if you want the stereotype, think red. There is a lady in the window, and when a man comes down the street, she starts dancing for him. As he shows interest, she invites him up to the room. He climbs up a dark, narrow staircase and she admits him into the room. Then the lights go out, men with clubs jump out from the next room and beat up the man, take his money and kill him or at least kick him back out on the street.

OK, so the excerpt in question is the SECOND one of these lurings in the piece. The clarinet plays the lady dancing. The image is important because it will influence the way you handle your phrasing. When you accent the first D, and then crescendo, the subtlety in the way you do that will evoke the subtlety of her dancing, like you are showing how fluid her movements are. Pacing is important, and again, think of the lady. Will she be successful if she dances more quickly? What is the kind of movement that will get the man to come upstairs? Use this as a model for your choices of tempo and rubato at the beginning of the excerpt. At the end of the excerpt, I assume that from the B-flat to A tremolos to the end, the man is getting beat up, so this thinking might influence the way you play the end of the excerpt. At the final note of the excerpt, the F-sharp, for me that moment is the moment the man passes out and falls limp.

You have probably heard how important it is listen to recordings when studying orchestral excerpts - in this one, it is more important than usual, not only for the imagery talked about above. If you listen to this passage, you will hear that the clarinet never seems to stop playing, and that is because the 2nd clarinet often continues the phrase when the 1st clarinet stops. Knowing when those passages are will really help your phrasing. Avoid tapering before rests if the 2nd is about to come in, sounds best to stop those portions of the phrase abruptly.

Suggestions about fingerings: at rehearsal 24, play alternate fingerings for the high D-flat when in tremolo to B-flat (I use overblown throat F-sharp), but you may wish to switch back to normal fingered D-flat for the sustained D-flats. For the two measures before rehearsal 25, I use a weird fingering for the high D-sharp: I finger the clarion B with my left hand and then play all four right hand side keys to get the D-sharp - B tremolo. My teacher at Cincinnati, Steve Cohen, he is able to use regular fingerings on this passage, but I have never gotten that to work for me. Feel free to experiment and find your own solution. Those two measures include both the first and second clarinet playing in unison, pretty loud, so the effect you want is scary, screaming, flailing. Use a fingering for D-sharp that is pretty in tune and can be played loudly.