My S had a good feeling after an interesting audition earlier this week. It was almost like a lesson combined with an audition. At one point, the professor was very demanding to see if my S could make changes and fix something (chords) quickly. He did, but after a half hour, he still hadn’t played all of the repertoire he had prepared. We both don’t know what to make of this. Do people typically play all of their pieces?
From my limited experience, I don’t think it is a big deal that he didn’t get to play all of the repertoire. It sounds like the professor asked for what he wanted to hear. For my son’s classical audition, he played his first concerto and his 2 orchestral excerpts and then he and the professor did some improvisational jazz together. I don’t know if this is typical or not though. He said it felt like a lesson/audition, too and it was very relaxed.
No, I wouldn’t worry about that. Demonstrating that you can respond quickly to instruction is always good, by the way.
One of the things we learned auditioning was that you can read too much into any audition, and in the process drive yourself crazy. There are so many things that effect what goes on in any room of any institution on a given day that there is no way of knowing for sure, so why try? With classical auditions it can be physically impossible to get through all of the audition material in the time allotted… at most places…we hit a place where they allowed twice as much time for each audition, and at one place they were running ahead so they let her finish everything and then asked for more. Who can tell? Just have everything prepared, and YES, being able to follow verbal instruction is essential. To paraphrase one teacher "I can tell in the first thirty seconds if you can play or not, what’s more important is whether you can learn.
It’s standard for VP majors. You pick the first one you want to sing and they pick one more from your list. That is by far the most common format. Almost never sing everything that was asked to be on the list.
My son’s worst audition…They were running late, the professors were hungry and eager to finish up so they could go to lunch and they appeared to be paying no attention to our son…ended up being the audition at the conservatory our son ended up attending. So definitely do not read too much into an audition.
It could very well have been the professor seeing if your child could respond to his teaching. I would look at it as a good sign. The professor didn’t just listen and say “thank you, good bye”
I agree with others, with what I know of auditions (instrumental, not familiar with voice), kids rarely are asked to play their entire repertoire, 15 minutes is often a ‘long’ audition, and things like scales and don’t seem to be asked for. In my son’s case, they asked for certain sections of his concerto (prob the fast and slow movement, small sections), his solo bach and I believe a sonata, and that was it, I don’t think any of his auditions lasted much more than 10 minutes. It sounds like in your son’s case, the professor (I guess he was the sole auditioner?) was okay with his playing, and wanted to see if he wanted to teach him. It is a bit different when there is a panel versus a single teacher, obviously, but admission is based on playing at a certain level (that the panel would determine), then if anyone wanted to teach him…you need both to get in:).
Glad it went well, hope he gets what he wants!
Thank you for all of your replies. Yes, it is driving us crazy trying not to read into the professors’ responses to his playing and lessons. I guess we will find out eventually 
@musicprnt Auditions can last more than the allotted time if the teachers are interested and are running ahead, so sometimes you do play everything all the way through. Also, you are right about scales not being asked for UNLESS you are auditioning at CIM and then, get ready for the scales - at least on viola.
At one school my son was stopped after the first page of his concerto and then played all of his Bach suite which he said wasn’t as clean as he’d have liked. My son was bummed because he said the second page of his concerto was the best part. He did not get a response yet. lol so who knows if it was a bad thing or not. But so far, good sample lesson and audition seem to be equaling an acceptance.
@jb-
Of course, I was talking generalities and what I have heard from a number of kids who have auditioned, in theory anything is possible on an audition. However, if the kid is playing the beethoven concerto where the first movement is like 20 some odd minutes, I doubt very much an audition panel would hear that, then a solo bach in its entirety and so forth. It depends on how many kids they are auditioning and to be honest, I have rarely seen auditions that were running ahead, unless they had a lot of kids they stopped early on, knowing they wouldn’t make it. Among other things, most schools now prescreen, so it is likely that few kids will be stopped early because they are so bad (or even good…:). Most schools generally schedule a lot of auditions in a day, so it is more than likely that they won’t ask for an entire piece like that…doesn’t mean you don’t prepare to play everything, you have to, in part because you never know what they are going to ask for, but the likelyhood is that the audition will be shorter than the allotted time, rather than longer in most instances that I have seen. Every school is different, if a school decides to audition 5 kids a day and allots 8 hours to do it, well, could listen a long time:)
A lot depends on stuff you cannot know. Maybe a judge drank a lot of coffee and needs to use the restroom. Audition ends early! Maybe they’re running early because of a cancellation. You play the whole movement. They say that the adjudicators know within 30 seconds whether they will admit the student. (I don’t believe this is really true in all cases, and particularly not at the grad level, where there are often many more suitable applicants than slots, but the larger point is that you can’t really judge from the length of an audition.)
I wouldn’t worry too much either. There is nothing you can do about it but move onto the next audition.
Just chiming with a don’t worry about it in the slightest (I know, easy to say). My daughter never got to play through any of her pieces to completion, or even close. Most of the time it was about a page of the concerto, maybe a page and a half, and half to three quarters of a page max of other pieces – the Bach movements-- and rarely ever even asked for the Paganini at all (and then only a bit of it). And from what I’ve seen, that’s pretty typical. The teaching bit never happened at any of her auditions, but it sounds pretty cool. She would have enjoyed that. As for trying to read the audition tea leaves, it’s probably impossible to resist, but pretty futile. Hang in! Crossing my fingers for your son!