Quote:
Originally Posted by basshog  The whole reason the bass world is up in arms about this audition is because the section guys are auto-advanced to the finals in February...
For a principal spot, I'm sure you have to have an open audition just to keep the AFM happy. They did, and they wasted peoples' time and money (including their own). The only thing we can do now is wait and see if Muti thinks any of section guys are qualified to be principal...  |
If the bass world is up in arms about this, they should put down their arms. Advancing section players to the final rounds is not an uncommon practice, and if there were a good survey on the subject, I'm sure that we would find out that it's done more often than not.
The CSO actually does a great service to the community of auditioning musicians by listening to anyone who wants to come out and take an audition. Most orchestras on that level screen candidates or have invite-only auditions, but they recognize the importance of giving young musicians the opportunity to take such a high level audition. It does make it harder to make an impact with the committee with such a large pool of candidates, but as someone referenced earlier about democracy being the worst form of gov't, except all the others - I think that applies here.
I didn't take this audition, so I don't know for certain whether they screened applications or not, but I do recall a second violin audition a few years ago that took at least a couple of weeks just to get through the prelims.
