Libby Barnette’s lucky number must be 4.
Last Monday, the veteran French horn player engaged in one of classical music’s most agonizing rituals. She auditioned for a symphony job.
After a grueling eight-hour day of high-stress playing and anxious waiting, Barnette, 39, won the job. It was her fourth audition for the Omaha Symphony in as many years. She beat out 19 musicians to become the orchestra’s newest part-time section player.
“I knew I had it in me,” said Barnette, who looked both relieved and spent after her artistic and emotional ordeal.
An Omaha resident, Barnette had good reason to feel elated. Jobs with professional orchestras are not plentiful.
“When a musician finally wins a job, they often hold on to it for 20 or 30 years,” said Ricardo Amador, the Omaha Symphony’s manager of orchestral personnel.
Even the Omaha Symphony’s part-time French horn position, which pays a base salary of $13,000 a year, was fiercely contested. Many of the auditioners had traveled — at their own expense — from as far away as California and New York.
The auditions, on the Holland Performing Arts Center’s main concert stage, began promptly at 10 a.m.
Jason DeWater, the symphony’s principal French horn player, was chairman of a jury that consisted of nine full-time symphony musicians.
A large partitioned screen separated the jury from the applicants. Strict union rules mandate anonymous auditions. Candidates were announced by number only.
“Everything is designed to assure fairness,” Amador said. “The orchestra world is small, we all know each other, and it would look bad if the winner turned out to have studied with someone on the jury.”
Complete anonymity even extended to shoes. A thick carpet was placed on stage to muffle the sound of walking.
“We don’t want the jury to know whether the candidate is a man or a woman based on the sound of their heels,” Amador said.
Candidates were asked to prepare 18 excerpts from the standard orchestral repertory. These were passages from the great symphonies and concertos of such composers as Beethoven, Brahms and Tchaikovsky. It’s music that all French horn players should learn in school.
During the first round, applicants were asked to play five of those excerpts.
They opened with a brisk and tricky passage from Beethoven’s Symphony No. 3 “Eroica” and followed it with a deceptively simple solo horn passage from the first movement of Brahms’ Piano Concerto No. 1.
In the Brahms, the horn solo consists of a short series of undulating notes that seem to float weightlessly above the rest of the accompaniment. A perfect rendition of this brief, 20-second passage can create a magical effect.
But sloppy phrasing or poor intonation can ruin the entire 20-minute movement. When that happens, the horn player leaves the stage like a football player who missed the game-winning field goal.
“You’re either going to walk off stage a hero or a disgrace,” said Music Director Thomas Wilkins, who attended some of the auditions. “The sound of the French horn is extremely exposed, so we need players who won’t crack under pressure.”
Last Monday, most of the applicants were struggling with nerves.
Few of them were able to hit the high chromatic notes from Prokofiev’s “Romeo and Juliet.” And some audibly ran out of breath when playing the famed “Frère Jacques” passage from Mahler’s Symphony No. 1.
After that, the sensitive ears of juror and principal cellist Paul Ledwon had finally had enough.
“Jason, you are being far too nice to some of these people,” he said to DeWater, jury chairman.
At first, DeWater allowed even the weakest candidates to play through all five of their first-round pieces. That soon changed.
“Would the candidate please skip to the last piece, the Shostakovich symphony,” he instructed one musician who marred the Mahler.
Despite the pressure, three candidates — Nos. 4, 8 and 15 — delivered expressive performances. They advanced to the finals.
The screen came down for this round. Finalists were required to play duos and trios with jurors DeWater and Ross Snyder, the symphony’s assistant principal French horn player. Anonymity, therefore, was no longer possible.
All gave worthy performances.
But candidate No. 4, Barnette, had a clear advantage over her competitors. (The symphony declined to release the names of the other finalists, citing union privacy rules.)
Among other things, Barnette has experience.
She spent nine years playing for the Air Force’s Heartland of America Band — her husband, Staff Sgt. Mark Barnette, still plays tuba for the group. She also plays with the Lincoln Symphony.
In music from Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No. 1, Beethoven’s Symphony No. 8 and Dvorak’s Cello Concerto, Barnette blended beautifully with DeWater and Snyder. The strength of her performance won the support of Wilkins and the jury.
But Barnette had more than musical experience on her side.
After her successful audition, she showed off a small, stuffed pink flamingo. It was a gift from her daughter Nora, 4.
“She said it would bring me luck during the audition,” Barnette said.
Contact the writer:
444-1076, john.pitcher@owh.com
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