Posted by Richard on June 04, 2000 at 13:09:52:
In Reply to: Arnold Jacobs Poll posted by anonymous on June 04, 2000 at 10:28:29:
Very interesting and audacious question. Mr. Jacobs expressed his own misgivings about how he would have done in today's industrial strength audition scene. It's almost a moot point whether the venue is provincial and naive, as the poster suggests with his hypothetical locale, or as cosmopolitan and sophisticated as we would expect the acknowledged majors to be. Prelims are calculated to weed out rather than cultivate. Jacobs might prevail if he delivers on his legendary accuracy and focus, but then there's the highly personal style. That tends to beg the question, "this guy can play, but can we work with that? Can we make him one of us?" Players of all instruments play better than anyone ever has, but the music scene is very corporate now.
Jacobs came from the era of the private audition, very much like the one Torchinsky took for Toscanini. If Torchinsky had screwed up, they would have tried someone else, but there would have been no cattle call. Herseth's audition, at Rodzinski's apartment in New York, same deal. Jacobs had been free-lancing in Chicago during the Pittsburgh off-season for several years in the early 40's and was known by the CSO. He described to me a private audition he played for Frederick Stock in 1942. Stock died later that year, George Hamburg stayed on for a while, but Jacobs was still hired a couple of years after, remaining the only serious candidate.
When I studied with him, he was still coaching for the one-on-one personal audition, although he must have surely changed as he saw the system change.
The stories about the CSO audition, my favorite, Jacobs turns to Solti and says, "Maestro, you've GOT to hire SOMEONE!"