Hello,

I was wondering if anyone on this forum has had any experience with the audition process at the Berlin Philharmonic. How many people are invited to any given audition? Are the auditions open to anyone, or are only a select few invited.
Any information would be helpful!
Thanks!

For obvious reasons, the Berlin Phil has lots of applicants, I have heard stories about more than one thousand applicants for one post. Obviously, they make a selection of some of the applicants, but I don't think they have a general rule of how many. Also, as most German orchestras, they don't announce applications limits nor audition dates, but select applications until they invite some for an audition. So, when you get an invitation, you might not know if they already had an audition for others or not.

Other stories include having all the people in the audition on stage at the same time, everyone have to play in front of all the other auditionees.

The Berlin Phil also has a two-year trial, different from the one-year trial which is common in Germany. They also have a high rate of people who don't pass their trial period.

I have auditioned for Berlin 3x. That is the maximum number of times they give you before they return your application. The relevant section, in my case, the violas, get together and go through all the applications and decide who to invite.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: vlavlavla,

When I auditioned there for Principal Viola in 2004, only ten people were invited, including three of their own and one or two did not show up. One of the no-shows was Lawrence Power, who is an excellent player and was tipped to be the favorite by an acquaintance of mine in the orchestra.

We all got to play the 1st movement of the classical era concerto with cadenza in the hall, with a couple dozen members of the orchestra listening. Once we were done, the orchestra members started leaving the hall and no one said a word to us! We had to ask what was going on and were told "well, we just couldn't agree on what to do and who to advance to the final round". That was interesting.

Luckily for them, one of the applicants that time won the audition at a later time and is now their Principal Violist, the incredible Carrie Dennis.