| BassDad, I agree! We've found the pre-screens to be expensive and disruptive. My S's pre-college teacher was not one who wanted students to be spending over a year to learn the audition concerto - and, at least for S, he didn't want him to return to a concerto performed previously. This meant scrambling in late November to put together a fine take of a major concerto he'd been working on for only a couple months. The teacher's schedule had the concerto set to be performance ready for the first audition in January - and it was. The push to "perform" for a CD recording earlier was incredibly stressful.
Thanks to S's new Zoom H-4 (!), some of those problems have been eliminated. He now records every concerto/solo work with accompaniment as he completes them and has a library of possible pre-recorded audition options. Sometimes the requirements state that CD's have to have been made within a specified time frame, but he hasn't found that to be a problem so far.
One other stategy we used for college prescreens, he recorded easier movements of solo Bach than he later performed at live auditions. Many times the prescreen and audition repertoire is not required to be the same. In retrospect, S should have recorded a concerto he'd studied previously for the prescreen and not pushed to record the one that was in preparation for live auditions.
Whew!! This discussion has brought back unpleasant memories! If he goes on to grad school, he'll have to handle it all himself! |