He was asked to play not four or five of the excerpts he'd been given but all of them. Having rehearsed them voraciously, Lu played for some 25 minutes largely from memory. They also wanted to know what kind of violin he played and were surprised to learn that he'd used his own instrument, an Amati he purchased while still at Oberlin.
"A lot of people will rent a Stradivari or Guarneri from music shops for an audition like this," Lu said. "I wasn't comfortable playing with a violin that was new to me."
Maazel, for his part, was also impressed with Lu's choice of music for the first round.
"Most people don't choose to play Dvorak," Lu said. "Maestro Maazel said he hadn't heard it played in audition in years. I think that may have given me a slight advantage."
Then Maazel, Masur and the other auditors went behind closed doors for three long hours.
Rather than pace the floor, each of the 11 finalists found a room and prepared to play again should they be asked. They weren't. When they emerged from their deliberations, the judges sent home eight of the musicians disappointed and awarded chairs to Lu, his alumna at the Manhattan School of Music, Elizabeth Zeltser, and a third violinist from China (It was also the first time in the orchestra's history that two ethnic Chinese were accepted at the same time. Lu said the symphony has a total of four Chinese musicians. The other three are all from China.)
Zeltser and the Chinese finalist joined the symphony immediately, but Lu opted to finish his master's while concurrently sitting with the orchestra. Though he's since earned his diploma, he says his formal education is far from over. Rather, taking a chair in the symphony has become an extension of his education. "I'm still learning," he said.
Lu first played with the orchestra in September of last year. What was it like to become a member of one of the world's great symphony orchestras?
"Very, very ? It was a brand new experience," he said. "And also such a high standard. But people are very nice. I'm still the youngest. A lot of people are in their 40s and some are in their 70s. I think people treat me as a kid most of the time, but they still regard me as a colleague."
But even as Lu takes his chair in the back row of the Philharmonic's violin section, he must still play from behind another kind of screen, one diplomatic in nature. He has six months remaining on the visa issued him by Taiwan's consular offices in New York and the Philharmonic has promised to help him secure a green card to stay in the US.
While not willing to go on record, officials at the Taiwan Economic and Cultural Office in New York privately express confidence that Lu will be able to continue playing with the Philharmonic rather than having to march back to Taiwan to join the military.
Lu is confident too.
"As long as I don't go to Taiwan, they're not going to come take me back."
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