Orchestral Excerpt preparation

Orchestral Excerpts - expert instruction

Dear Flute Players,

I have some University aged students asking about how to learn and perfect orchestral excerpts, and also I'll bet there are some younger flutists who need to know WHY these excerpts are important to begin working on when they're developing their expertise. (For the "Why", see below.)

So firstly, Inspiration and Information:

Here are free pdfs of all the most famous orchestral excerpts (new link 2019)
and..
Here are some videos that are fabulously interesting! See the new Andreas Blau teaching videos in English, with all sorts of insights into famous flute audition excerpts:

Andreas Blau of Berlin Philharmonic
Orchestral Excerpts Masterclass at Carnegie Hall

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Beethoven Leonore Overture No. 3





Beethoven Piccolo from Ninth Symphony





Hindemith's Symphonic Metamorphasis






Get free sheetmusic for these and other:


Advanced excerpts:

Hindemith and Beethoven Ninth piccolo: (pdf 4.12 mb)

Intermediate:
Beethoven Leonore no. 3 and other intermediate excerpts.

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Listen:

All flute famous excerpts original whole pieces with full orch. on youtube.
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Best Orch Excerpt Flute Basic Books:


Best first purchase orchestral excerpts book  for grades two to A.R.C.T.

1. Novice to Advanced: (no CD)

 Overtones - Orchestral Excerpts Book for Flute



2. Advanced: (CD purchased separately, but totally worth owning!)

Best orchestral excerpt book and CD for advanced students:

Jeanne Baxtresser: former Principal, New York Philharmonic

2a. Orchestral Excerpt Book with flute and piano parts.

2 b. Baxtresser CD with demonstrations of most excerpts from book.
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Lists of flute excerpt books:
All flute orchestral excerpt books in print.

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"Why?"

Reasons why one should learn orchestral excerpts for flute:

 1. In case the phone rings and you suddenly have to run and substitute for a concert for which you've never seen the music. If you can already play the most difficult repertoire excerpts, you will be confident going into any orchestra as a last minute emergency substitute flutist.

2. In case an audition suddenly comes up for a local orchestra or youth orchestra, you'll already know the audition repertoire, and won't take very long to practice it back up to audition level.

3. In order to learn the genius of the great orchestral composers. There is seriously nothing like this music for being in depth and fantastically amazing!

4. In order to play along with orchestral recordings of your favourite composers. (If you're not in an orchestra now, but love to imagine "as if"....I just love playing along with Bernstein conducting for example! Vicariously!)

5. In order to learn the very finest level of finesse of flute playing and interpretation.

6. In order to conquor the challenges of the most difficult techniques on the flute.

7. In order to take the advanced techniques you learned in orchestral excerpts and apply them to the rest of your flute playing.

Hope this helps, Best, Jen