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Dear Tubeneters,

I just would like to know if there has ever been somebody in Germany who won a tuba audition with a piston valve tuba?
I know that there are some tubist who play with piston valve instruments, but not sure if it was they instrument on the audition too.

Thanks for your kind response!

Mike Johnson wrote:A few years ago Roland Szenpali won the Vienna Phil job, playing piston F and Piston CC!! He was told that to take the job he had to have rotary F and BBb. He declined!


Mike

Holy cow! This IS a serious argument. I'm sorry I teased Klaus.
My first tuba was a Russian Army rotor with slow ,clanky valves.
I was surprised to see a tuba player in a polka band play a big Yamaha rotor really fast and his valves were quiet.
I was glad to buy a piston horn like mine was in school. A King-good player.
I have been boistrously hawking pistons with great gusto in the rotor/piston discussions here on tubenet but my experience is so limited.
It has been fun but I now realize I should yield the debate to those who know more and really care.

I wonder how much of the F/BBb rotary requirement by German orchestras is down to perceived tonal differences and how much to pure tradition?

How many of us could tell if a tuba was rotary, or piston; CC, or BBb just by listening?

However a desire to maintain a specific national culture is to be admired. The world is too much all becoming the same.

that this 90% tradition. I've studied in Nürnberg and my teacher told me all the time that I need a B&S rotary valve F-tuba. However all the other professors at the Academie were really satisfied, and happy with my playing in the Meistersinger Prelude altough I played it with a Yamaha YFB-621!!!! And they told me that the sound was big enough! After that we had one unforgettable concert with Zubin Mehta conducting, Tristan und Isolde Prelude, and Isoldes Liebestod with Waltraud Meier and Siegfried Jerusalem and there I played with a Apollo F, but nobody told me I need to use it.

So I think this is mostly tradition. You can bland with a piston valve tuba the same like with a rotary instrument if you know how to do that.


Best regards

Tradition often gets in the way of quality. Too bad.

You know this guy would sound even better on a Yamaha!

There was a tubist iin the Berlin Radio Phil (?) who played a Holton CC regularly. Don Little subbed for him one year and also played the Holton CC in the orchestra. Odd for Germany.

OK, I'm going to butcher the spelling but after it's corrected by someone, I'm going to edit the post because I should know this:

Rich Nahatzski.

I heard or possibly read, that Glidden plays EVERYTHING on that horn. Including "Bydlo". I have heard a few recordings and he is phenomenal. Don't forget Walter Hilgers. And the things hes does with an immense BBb.

While I was stationed in Germany, I met Bert Nordbloom, an American who had moved there to study and play. At last report, he was playing with an opera orchestra, was teaching at the Hochschule Fuer Musik in Wuerzburg, and playing in a quintet, all with a Boosey Eb.

For the orchestra audition, he was told that he would be required to play F tuba. He took his Boosey Eb, saying that if no one noticed, that it must sound OK. He got the job, which speaks volumes, I think.