Last month, I presented a class at the wonderful Meg Quigley Symposium on how to be a great section player in the orchestra. I created a handout for the class that I would like to share here as well, in the hopes that it will be useful for young bassoonists who want to improve their playing in orchestra. It's tough to get feedback on orchestral playing (I offer suggestions for doing so at the end of the document), but the principles outlined here are what have helped me in my own career. I welcome any questions you might have in the comment section!

View the PDF below or click here to download it.

At long last, here's another post about an incorrect marking in an important bassoon part. There's something about finding these kinds of mistakes that I find weirdly satisfying, and I hope that pointing them out can help other bassoonists as well.

This time, we'll be looking at the fiendishly fast excerpt from the third movement of Ravel's Piano Concerto in G. This excerpt is certainly a test of auditioners' ability to move their fingers quickly and evenly, but the biggest musical challenge is performing the written dynamics. The excerpt begins and remains piano until there is a mezzo forte marked two measures before rehearsal 15:

I had always wondered what to do about that mezzo forte: should it be suddenly loud there? Or should I add a crescendo leading up to it, risking a committee thinking that I wasn't doing exactly what was on the page? I even posed this quandary to other bassoonists, who had differing opinions.

Turns out I should have checked the score earlier than I did. In the score, there is a crescendo marked before the mezzo forte:

To get extra verification that the score and not the part is correct, I looked at what else is going on in the orchestra in that measure:

Almost every instrument in the orchestra crescendos in that measure, solidifying the case that there is a crescendo missing in the bassoon part.

You may be asking yourself, "So what?" This crescendo might seem like the least of your worries in this very difficult excerpt. Here's why I think it matters:

1. It's not a great idea to ignore markings from the composer.
   
2. If you're playing this piece in the orchestra, you will not be heard if you're the only one not crescendoing in that measure.
   
3. If you're playing this excerpt in an audition, there will be many auditioners who can play this excerpt cleanly. However, there will be very few who make anything of it musically. Playing it cleanly is the first hurdle, but playing it with dynamics—including that crescendo—will make you stand out.
   

The only remaining question is whether it is at all risky in an audition to add a crescendo that isn't in the part. In this case, I do not think it is a risk, primarily because it makes musical sense (especially because Ravel did actually intend for it to be there) and because the committee will be happy if you do the dynamics at all. To help things along even further, if you are on an audition panel where this is an excerpt, make sure that the crescendo gets added to the parts provided to the auditioners and the committee.

Perhaps that "first hurdle" of playing this excerpt cleanly is good material for a future blog post on practice strategies, but for now, enjoy your newfound freedom to crescendo to that mezzo forte!

In the final movement of Bartók's Concerto for Orchestra, there are several tricky technical passages in the tenor register for Bassoon 1 and 2. In this post, I'd like to share some fingerings that make these passages more playable. These are the fingerings I'll be using when DSO performs the Bartók next week—you can catch the concert, which also features Brahms' Violin Concerto, on the livestream here on Saturday, May 25 at 8 p.m. EDT.

My most recent blog post addressed mistakes in the Bassoon 2 part for this piece. Check it out!

Fast technique in the tenor register is often more difficult than fast technique in the middle register due to the convoluted tenor register fingerings. The good news is that there are also many more fingering options for every note. In technical passages, I make it a priority to choose each fingering carefully, write my choices into the music, and work with those fingerings from a slow tempo. I often compare this method to how pianists must choose and write in their fingerings.

Because there are so many fingering options for every note, there are many elegant solutions for these passages. The fingerings I'm suggesting here are by no means the only options, but they have worked well for me. Give them a try and see what you think.

The first difficult section is mm. 59–72:

The two unusual fingerings I use here are for high A and high F#:

It's easiest to think of the A fingering as a normal A without the right hand. Similarly, you can think of the F# fingering as a normal G without the low F key. I use these fingerings for all the As and F#s in this section, except for the A in m. 66, since I already have the low G key depressed for the preceding G#. I included the whisper key in the F# fingering, but it can be left off. (If you aren't already in the habit of leaving off the whisper key for high G in fast technique, it's helpful to notate when you plan to omit it.)

Here's one other difficult passage, mm. 123–126:

One common complaint about these kinds of fingerings is that they don't sound as good as the ones we're used to, whether that's because of pitch, timbre, or response quality. Here's what I do to combat that issue:

• I practice long tones on the fingerings I choose to ensure that it's possible to get the desired pitch and response.
• I practice going back and forth between a standard fingering and the fingering I have chosen and try to match pitch and timbre as closely as possible.
• Even though it's essential to incorporate my chosen fingerings at a slow tempo, I acknowledge that at full speed, subtle differences in color and even pitch will not be audible.
  

Please let me know in the comments if you have any questions about these fingerings or would like to share your own solution for these passages! I'll leave you with a recording of how my suggested fingerings sound.

Welcome to my blog! This post is about three significant errors in the 2nd Bassoon part to Béla Bartók's Concerto for Orchestra. My next post will give some fingering suggestions for the technical passages in the 5th movement.

Not only is the Concerto for Orchestra one of the most frequently performed orchestral works, but excerpts from it show up on most orchestral bassoon auditions. These errors are therefore doubly consequential, and my hope is that the corrections will become more widely implemented in both performances and auditions. I recently performed the piece with my Oakland University students, and I'll play it again with the Detroit Symphony in a few weeks—both times, with the following corrections:

Error 1: The Excerpt in the 2nd Movement
The bassoon section has two great features in the 2nd movement. The first time, 1st and 2nd Bassoons play a duet, and the second time, the 3rd Bassoon joins in while the 1st and 2nd play an ornamented version of the duet. It is the addition of the ornaments that creates a wrong note in the 2nd Bassoon part.

Here is the first iteration of the duet. In m. 14, notice the D-natural circled in red in the 2nd Bassoon part:

Later in the movement, in the ornamented version of the duet, this D-natural becomes a D-sharp, due to the ornament added earlier in the measure (m. 170):

Not counting the ornaments, the circled D-sharp is the only note that is different from the first duet. Why would Bartók change this one note?

My answer is that he intended for it to be a D-natural both times. This would be a tough error to catch while proofreading, especially considering that Bartók was on his deathbed while writing this piece, because visually the second time looks exactly like the first time.

The main evidence for the D-natural is that there are no other note differences between the two duets, other than the addition of the ornaments. Although they appear in the same measure, that circled D-sharp has no musical relationship to the added ornament earlier in the bar; the last two 16th notes are pickups to the next measure and should therefore maintain the pitches from the first duet.

I also investigated whether there was any way to justify the D-natural vertically: is there any significance to the interval between the bassoons being a major 6th vs. a minor 6th? I couldn't find anything. The distance between the bassoons seems to freely alternate between major and minor 6ths throughout the duet. However, crucially, there are no other instances of the interval being adjusted in the second iteration of the duet.

Error 2: An Unintended 3rd Bassoon Solo
The next error concerns the 2nd and 3rd Bassoon parts in the 3rd movement. There is a discrepancy between the score and parts, and I believe the correct version is the score. Check out mm. 84–86, bracketed in red:

If you've ever played the 3rd Bassoon part to the Concerto for Orchestra, you might remember this passage as one of your big moments. Alas, I'm here to tell you that the 3rd Bassoon should not be playing in these measures. In the parts, the 1st and 2nd Bassoon are in unison, while the 3rd Bassoon takes the lower melody on its own. As you can see in the score excerpt above, the 1st and 2nd Bassoons each get their own independent melody, and the 3rd Bassoon is not playing.

The main evidence for this correction is that scores generally tend to be more accurate than parts. It also seems a little strange that 1st and 2nd Bassoon would be in unison on a solo like this. However, there is an argument to be made for the poor 3rd Bassoon. The other winds play in this passage as well, and while the English horn and 1st Flute both play by themselves, the 1st and 2nd Clarinets play in unison... So maybe the 1st and 2nd Bassoons should be as well.

In the rental parts that the DSO is using, this error had already been corrected, so I am not the only one to think that it makes more sense for the 3rd Bassoon to be out of the picture here!

Error 3: A Weird Wrong Note in the 5th Movement
The final error is a wrong note in a technical passage in the 5th movement that has started regularly appearing on auditions. Here is the 2nd Bassoon part:

That circled A on the downbeat of m. 68 is the note in question. The score also shows an A:

Here's where it gets weird. The 1st Bassoon part has an F instead of an A:

The F is correct; the 1st Bassoon part is right and the 2nd Bassoon part and score are wrong. Take a look at the other woodwind parts:

The oboes and clarinets play this whole passage in octaves with the bassoons (note that the clarinet parts are in B-flat). They all play an F here, and there are no other note differences between the oboes, clarinets, and bassoons. Even the flutes, who have a contrasting line, end up on an F on the downbeat of m. 68. In fact, in the entire orchestra, every instrument is playing an F, C, or B-flat—no As anywhere (and they wouldn't sound very good with those B-flats).

Although it's weird that the score and 2nd Bassoon part would have the same incorrect note, there is extremely strong musical evidence that the F is correct. Hopefully you haven't spent too much time practicing this passage with the A (unfortunately I think that the F makes it a little harder!).

Let me know what you think in the comments! There are a few more mistakes in the bassoon parts, most of which aren't quite as consequential; I'll let you discover those on your own. Stay tuned for my next post that will offer some fingering suggestions for the technical passages in the 5th movement!