Learn to Play Recorder

Lesson 90: Performance Preparation, Part 5 — Audition and Complete Recital

  • Choose and prepare an audition piece — the single work that represents you to a panel.
  • Perform the complete recital programme built in Lesson 86, applying everything from Lessons 87–89.
  • Record the recital, listen back, and articulate the next thing you want to work on.
  • Lessons 86–89 — the four prior performance-preparation lessons.
  • The repertoire from Lessons 57–78 (the major work studies plus Handel and Telemann arcs).
  • Audition-piece selection.
  • Complete-recital performance.
  • Articulating what comes next.

The end of the curriculum is the beginning of the work.

This is the last lesson. Ninety lessons, four years (if you have moved at the recommended pace), several hundred hours of work. The structured curriculum ends here; the rest of your musical life is yours to build. The capstone is the work you do this week: a single audition piece, prepared to the standard you would offer to a panel, plus the complete recital programme from Lesson 86, performed and recorded.

The audition piece

If you ever need to present yourself to a chamber music group, a competition jury, a university audition, or a private teacher — you will need a single piece (sometimes a movement) that represents your playing. The piece should:

  • Be a canonical work. Pick something the panel already knows. Handel HWV 360, HWV 362, Telemann TWV 41:F2, the Bach Brandenburg 4 solo. Do not audition with an obscure work; the panel will not have a reference for how it should sound.
  • Show your strengths. If your strength is breath control, pick a slow movement. If your strength is articulation, pick a fast one. Do not pick a piece that exposes a weakness in order to demonstrate “range.”
  • Be in your hands. A piece you have played in performance more than once is safer than a piece you have just learned to performance level.

Suggested audition pieces from this curriculum:

  • Handel HWV 360, first or second movement (Lessons 61–62).
  • Handel HWV 362, Larghetto (Lesson 76).
  • Telemann TWV 41:F2, complete (Lessons 64–66).
  • Van Eyck, Doen Daphne theme + first variation (Lesson 71).

The complete recital

The forty-minute programme you built in Lesson 86. Apply everything:

  • Lesson 87: Choreograph the entry, bow, tuning, transitions, exit.
  • Lesson 88: Use the pre-performance routine. Mentally rehearse the day before.
  • Lesson 89: Record the performance. Microphone placement, room, takes.

You do not need an audience for the first run. A complete “dress rehearsal” in performance conditions — on the stage you would actually use, with the program in order, in the clothes you would wear, recorded — is enough for the capstone. An audience is the next step beyond this lesson.

Listening back to the recital

The listening-back discipline from Lessons 60 and 89 scales up:

  • The day after the performance, listen straight through. Do not stop. Do not take notes. Just listen.
  • The day after that, listen again with notes. Mark three things you would do differently. Mark three things you were proud of.
  • The day after that, articulate the next thing. What would you work on for the second recital? An additional piece? A particular technique? A new repertoire area?

The next thing is the answer the curriculum cannot give you. You give it to yourself.

Beyond the curriculum

What comes after Lesson 90 is unstructured. There is no Lesson 91. The curriculum has taken you from the first note to a performance-ready recital; the rest is the life of an adult musician.

A few directions worth considering, in no particular order:

  • Wider repertoire. Bach. Vivaldi's other concerti. Sammartini, Loeillet of London, Mancini. The Telemann fantasias. Renaissance consort music with other players.
  • Performance. Find an audience. Play at a coffeehouse, a church service, a friend's house. Performance is a different skill from playing; it improves only with use.
  • Teaching. Find one student. Teaching another player is the fastest way to improve your own playing.
  • A different period or instrument. The renaissance flute. The Baroque flute. The cornetto. The recorder is part of a family; the family is the larger education.
  • Composition. Write a piece for recorder. Your understanding of the instrument will be permanent after.

Now play these

The complete program from Lesson 86. Plus your audition piece, in front of a friend if possible.

When you have recorded a complete recital programme, listened back through the three-day discipline above, and articulated the next thing you want to work on — you have finished this curriculum. There is no Lesson 91. From here, choose your own direction.