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Lots of great responses regarding what key of tuba one might use for performing Bruckner's 4th (or any Bruckner symphony). Barry's response was especially interesting to me and he made great points!

To take the original question a step further, which instrument do you all feel is appropriate for these symphonies in an audition situation ? Sometimes I think there is a preconceived notion (even on a committee) as to what instrument should be used. I have always believed that you put your best foot forward---do whatever it takes to sound your best, but auditions are strange animals.

Any thoughts?

tubapress wrote:...Sometimes I think there is a preconceived notion (even on a committee) as to what instrument should be used.

From my great distance, it would appear that those who win auditions do it on more modest equipment, size-wise, though they may well use bigger stuff once they get the gig.

Nobody has told me why, but I would suspect that a tuba sounds different by itself than it does within an ensemble. As such, clarity may be a higher goal when playing alone, especially since there is no earth to move without the ensemble.

Thus, if I were to be invited to audition for the local semi-amateur group, and if I were foolish enough to risk such humiliation, I would probably bring smaller equipment.

This isn't specific to Bruckner, of course.

In the times I've heard Bruckner live, some have been blast-fests and others have shown a more conservative approach. I've always preferred the latter. The blast-fests always sounded like a recording engineer riding the gain. The question is: Is that what the conductors wanted? If the answer to that is yes for the conductor in question, maybe the bigger equipment would be justified at the audition. Which leads me to a larger point that from this distance is probably only valid in my mind: One should know the characteristic sound of an orchestra before making equipment decisions for an audition.

Rick "who can only do the Bruckner justice using a CD player" Denney