The Audition Tempo
A Year 12 student is preparing a solo performance for assessment. The chosen work is a fast movement marked crotchet = 132, but the student can only play it cleanly at 112. The student plans to perform at 112 and has told the accompanist to follow. In rehearsal the student's teacher observes that the piece sounds laboured and that the student's articulation becomes muddy above 116. The assessment criteria reward accuracy, stylistic understanding and communication, and penalise tempo that is materially below the marked speed only where it damages the character of the work. The student has eight weeks and practises 45 minutes a day, five days a week.
1. Advise the student on tempo choice, justifying the decision against the assessment criteria.
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The decision turns on what the criteria actually reward. Accuracy and communication are weighted; a tempo materially below the marking is penalised only where it damages the work's character. A clean 112 that preserves articulation and phrasing will usually score better than a muddy 132, but only if 112 still communicates the movement's character - its energy, forward impulse and dance-like lilt.
The student should therefore not simply settle at 112. The target should be the fastest tempo at which articulation stays clean, which the teacher has identified as around 116. That is close enough to 132 to preserve character while remaining accurate.
A realistic plan over eight weeks: practise at 100 with full articulation and dynamics, then raise the metronome by 2–4 bpm per week, only moving up when the passage is clean three times in a row. Use rhythmic variants (dotted, reversed) and slow practice on the difficult bars rather than playing the whole movement repeatedly. Aim to reach 120–124 by performance, with 116 as the guaranteed clean fallback.
The student must also rehearse with the accompanist at the chosen tempo and agree it in advance, rather than instructing the accompanist to follow a tempo that may drift under performance nerves. A settled, agreed tempo is itself part of communication.
2. The student argues that playing at 112 is a legitimate interpretive choice. Assess this argument.
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It is legitimate only conditionally. Tempo is an interpretive parameter, and many works tolerate a range of speeds; a slower reading can reveal detail and weight. But the argument fails where the slower tempo changes the character of the work rather than illuminating it. The teacher's observation that the piece sounds laboured at 112 is the key evidence: the movement is marked fast and is presumably dance-like or energetic, and a laboured reading contradicts that character.
The student's argument would be stronger if the slower tempo produced a coherent alternative expressive profile - for example, a deliberate, weighty reading with consistent articulation and phrasing shaped to that tempo. It would be weaker if the slowing is simply the limit of the student's technique, which is what the evidence suggests, since the student can only play cleanly at 112 and articulation degrades above 116.
So the honest position is: the student may perform below 132, but should present it as a considered choice supported by phrasing, dynamics and articulation that suit the chosen speed, and should not claim interpretive licence for what is a technical ceiling. The examiner is likely to hear the difference.