It is a dicey relationship, to say the least. You meet up randomly with a stranger, usually with little or no introduction. You must communicate wordlessly with each other using only your body language and other nonverbal cues, yet perform flawlessly, moving and breathing as one.
When you are through, you leave, maybe never to see each other again, and you wait for your adrenaline to subside. You have one of two reactions: “I hope it’s this good again next time,” or “What an idiot. Never again!”
A blind date in a foreign country?
No. Working with an audition pianist without a rehearsal.
Horror stories about bad audition pianists abound, but you can help ensure that you both of you have as positive an experience as possible. Think of it as writing your own audition insurance policy.
In my job as assistant conductor at the Opera Company of Philadelphia, I play literally hundreds of auditions every year. I would like to share some of my personal experiences with successful and unsuccessful auditions from the standpoint of the person sitting at the keyboard.
From our point of view, we will often see upwards of 20 or 30 singers during an audition day, all in various states of anxiety, and we never know just what they will ask us to play. It may be a morning of almost all Mozart or someone may just bring in that Wozzeck aria they have been honing for months on end.
The sheer number of people we hear in audition in Philadelphia means I am generally unable to meet with singers to rehearse prior to their auditions. Renée Rollin, our auditions coordinator, does a wonderful job soothing nerves over the phone, but if a company tells you it will provide an accompanist for your audition, it doesn’t hurt to ask who that person will be. We always give the option of bringing your own pianist if you are more comfortable with that, and I certainly don’t take it personally when the next candidate arrives with accompanist in tow.
A heads-up on your repertoire is a nice gesture, but not really necessary, unless you are bringing something off the beaten path. I remember one phone call with a singer who was quite concerned because she was bringing something “really obscure and very, very difficult [insert dramatic pause here],” and then added in a low whisper, “the ‘Composer’s Aria’!”
Honestly? The “Composer’s Aria” is standard rep, at least in my book. If you are bringing “News” from Nixon in China, that I wouldn’t mind having a warning about. Ditto for Lulu, or the latest hot excerpt from a new work. You should consider anything that is in the aria anthologies “standard.”
A colleague of mine who coaches at a prestigious conservatory once shared some terrific advice for pianists playing auditions: No matter how good you are, or how many years you have been in the business, eventually someone will bring in something you don’t know. This is quite true. If that “someone” is you, what can you do to help yourself as well as the accompanist? Here are some tips.
Mark Your Music Well
Assume that the accompanist will have little or no time to chat before you begin singing your audition. One auditor I worked with used to intentionally interrupt this “conference at the mound” by asking loudly, “What will you begin with today?” Put everything in writing, just to be safe.
More than anything else, make sure your music is marked clearly with all of your choices for tempos, cuts, breaths, and so forth—and do me a favor: please be sure each time that these markings are up-to-date. It does neither of us any good if you still have breath markings you no longer use because your new teacher has improved your long legato lines tremendously and you can’t wait to show this off. If I see a breath mark in the music, I will give you space to breathe. If you no longer take that breath, you will suddenly find yourself with a relaxed tempo you didn’t really want, making it that much harder to get through the phrase in one breath.
If it is a new piece or one with various tempos, include a metronome marking. “Quarter note = 120” goes a long way towards communicating your need. “Half note = 60” tells me that you like to feel the piece in two, rather than in four. Obviously, in the heat of the moment things get faster and slower, but it certainly puts us in the right ballpark.
Same goes for “railroad tracks,” pauses, rallentandos and fermatas. Mark anything that will give me a clear and concise picture of how you intend to perform the piece, so you don’t have to explain it to me. In an ideal world, you shouldn’t have to walk me through the entire piece verbally before you sing it.
In terms of cuts, less is more. In other words, leave out all the music you don’t sing, so I am absolutely certain where your cut begins and ends. When I coach singers I like to tell them to make “Cuts for Dummies.” The ideal method is to either pull out the pages you aren’t singing, or if that isn’t possible, cover the cut music with plain white paper so that all the pianist sees is what you will be performing. Use the “VI-” and “-DE” markings, big enough to see easily. For a Bel Canto piece especially, I usually flip through quickly before we begin and double-check the cuts for myself in case I have any quick questions.
This is also true of cadenzas. I don’t want to see every cadenza you’ve ever tried scribbled on the page in miniscule writing. I just want to see the cadenza you are planning to sing today, so that we have a prayer of ending up together. Otherwise I just hold my breath and take my best guess as to what exactly you are doing—not the ideal method.
Please, please be sure all of your music is in your binder and in the right order. A crosscheck before your audition is not excessive. Do not, under any circumstances, give me loose pages. That makes me cranky. They fall off the piano, they get out of order, they can be upside down—you get the point.
One audition that will live in infamy in my memory forever was a Zerbinetta where one of the loose pages blew off the piano and onto the floor. It was not a pretty sight as I tried to play with my right hand, and bend over and scoop up the page with my left, and everybody suffered in the end, except perhaps the auditors who were trying to stifle their snickers.
I remember an audition in Philadelphia with a well-established soprano who brought in “Tu che di gel” from the aria anthology. Unfortunately, the middle page had fallen out of the book and was not part of the anthology anymore, a disaster in the making to which the singer was oblivious. I didn’t notice until we had actually started the aria: she finished the first page and suddenly we were on the last of the four pages. Now, I know Liù pretty well, but I certainly don’t have it memorized. I had to stop the audition and say, very quietly, “I’m sorry, Ms. X, but your music is missing.” Not an impression you wish to leave with the company.
You’ve heard this before, but it’s worth repeating again: Don’t use those terrible plastic sheet protectors. They only serve to reflect the glare of overhead lighting and make your music that much harder to read, and they’re slippery little devils as well.
Tab everything clearly. It wastes everyone’s time if I have to fumble to find the next piece requested. My standard line is, “Perhaps you can find this quicker than I can,” but inside I am grumbling about singers who can’t keep an organized audition book. Put the arias you are offering today in the very front, labeled clearly, and have back-up arias with you as well—occasionally one of our auditors is looking for something specific that you may not have offered. If you left that music at home, there goes that opportunity.
Take the Lead and Indicate What You Want
Even with all of these great preventative measures, your pianist may still start your aria with a tempo you never intended, and you start to panic: “That’s too slow; I’ll never get through this in one breath!” “That’s too fast; I can’t possibly keep up with the coloratura!”
So take the reins. Some pianists out there are clueless, but most of us are listening to the singer intently to be sure we are on the same page, so to speak. I want nothing more than for you to give me a clear indication of what you want to do—I’m not a mind reader. If you slow up, I’ll go with you. Same for taking a faster tempo. However, this has to be done vocally. If you start conducting us both, it only makes you look insecure. Same goes, heaven forbid, for actually beating on the piano.
Another thing: Please do us both a big favor—don’t stand 10 feet downstage of the piano so I can’t see your face, particularly if you have gorgeous hair covering it up even more. I need to be able to see you breathe, and form a phrase, and place a word. I will be watching you like a hawk, but not being able to see your face is like flying blind, believe me.
It sounds like a cliché, but when you audition for us, we really do want you to do well. Auditions are nerve-wracking enough as it is. Invest the time in preparing yourself and your music so that you and your collaborator onstage can have the best artistic experience possible—which in turn may lead to bigger and better things down the road.
