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This is one of the very few soft excerpts ever asked and, as such, it is sure to be on every audition you ever take.
We know this piece (and most of Schumann's works) in editions edited by his wife, Clara Schumann (although the orchestral parts never indicate this). There are some discrepancies between the score and the parts, and in the case of the bass trombone part to this symphony, there are a number of phrasing choices the individual players needs to make based on informed performance practice and common sense.
The tempo is slow, but Schumann clearly left us a metronome marking of quarter note = 54. To play it slower is to court disaster (to say nothing of violating the composer's clear intentions). This movement was inspired by the ceremony elevating the Archbiship of Cologne to the rank of Cardinal in the great cathedral of Cologne, Germany, and the movement should have a timeless, noble, even "spiritual" quality to it. The word "Feierlich" means solemn, ceremonial. By the way, the appelation "Rhenish" means "Rhine."
I have marked in several slide positions in an effort to achieve the most smooth legato possible. Players with in-line bass trombones may well have other options. I tend to want to keep slurring "down" the slide to avoid valve "popping" but care must be taken to keep the pitch accurate.
The solid line slur in measures 3-4 is the phrasing as the score shows, but the part has the slur as in the dotted line - I vote for the longer phrase. The low E flat in measure 6 has no accent on it - here the entire orchestra weighs in with a heavy chord, so simply add more air and make a nice, soft attacked forte with an immediate diminuendo over six beats.
The solo in measure 12 is doubled with the bassoons and celli. The key here is an understanding of the words "Nach und nach stärker." Some editions of the piece render this "poco a poco crescendo" but the original German has a deeper meaning. Literally translated, it means, "Little by little stronger" - if Schumann had simply wanted the passage to get louder, he would have written "Nach und nach lauter." So, in addition to increasing in volume (from the printed piano marking to about mezzo-forte by the end), we need the whole line to grow in intensity, for the line to really have a forward motion, increasing in STRENGTH with every passing note. Control is the important thing here, and a little vibrato will help keep the pitch centered and add more beauty to the passage. I prefer the longer phrases as marked with the dotted lines, thereby conforming to the phrasing the first trombone has on the parallel melody in the opening measures of the movement. Various editions render the phrasing in different ways, so choose something that makes good, justifiable and solid musical sense and then sell it to the audition committee.
Thanks to my good friends, Rudolph and Edith Deeg, for their help in confirming the nuances of Schumann's German.
You can hear me play this excerpt on the 1984 audition tape which I made for the Boston Symphony Orchestra. The recording may be found in mp3 format on the Douglas Yeo Boston Symphony Orchestra Audition Tape page of this website.
To download the music of this excerpt as a PDF file which may be read and printed in a high quality output with Adobe Acrobat Reader (free software), click the icon below:
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