Audition #4

I final audition of the fall was for yet another north shore orchestra. This one had not announced any horn openings, but the conductor invited me to play for him. This audition was almost two weeks after the last one. For this, the conductor had said to bring anything I wanted to play, so I brought basically the same excerpts and solo that I had to my first audition: Beethoven 9th (4th horn solo), Brahms 3rd, Shostakovitch 5th, Til, and of course, the Mozart 3rd concerto.
The auditions were being held at a very large high school in one of the north suburbs. When I got there I realized I didn't know where in this very large building the auditions were happening. I called my husband to see if there were directions that I had neglected to take along, sure enough, there were. So now I was searching in the dark for the stage door entrance, which turned out to be next to a loading dock. In spite of this, I felt almost completely relaxed. The personnel manager greeted me and introduced me to the conductor, who took me into a large back stage area. We chatted a little, then I started with the Mozart.
It was as though I had taken some of Harry Potter's liquid luck. Everything I played was as good as I could have hoped for. I played musically, I was not the slightest bit nervous, even the trill worked! In between playing, the conductor and I talked -- about why Beethoven wrote the 9th symphony solo for 4th horn, about pets, and finally, about his orchestra.
He was clearly pleased with my playing and gave me a number of nice compliments; however, they hadn't announced an opening because there was no opening. Not only was there no opening, but one of the concerts was strings only and another used only two horns. He said he would keep me in mind for subbing and extra work, but it didn't sound as if there would be any this year.
Nevertheless, I went home beaming from this audition.
Next, the results.