The Audition Ledger. Twenty-nine orchestral vacancies close in the next thirty days, from two tutti cellos in the Berlin Philharmonic to the Concertgebouw's solo percussion, every one checked against the orchestra's own posting. Fifteen say what they pay.

Cadenza's jobs lane held 492 listings this morning. Set aside the teaching, administrative and staff posts and, by our own classification, 332 are orchestral performance vacancies at 124 orchestras in 19 countries. Twenty-nine of them close in the next thirty days, before 7 October. We checked every one against the orchestra's own posting: the title as posted, the number of chairs, the deadline, the audition date, and what, if anything, the notice says about money.

The 29 are in the table, with the pay line quoted exactly as each orchestra wrote it. That last column is the point of the exercise. Fifteen of the 29 notices state a figure. One, the Volksoper, says the salary is individual. Thirteen say nothing about money at all.

The document

Every row was checked on 7 September 2026 against the page linked in the last column. Deadlines are application deadlines unless marked; audition dates are as posted. Pay is quoted verbatim; where a notice gives a system instead of a number, the system is named.

Three notices that have moved

Three postings that players have been watching this month are not in the table, because their dates have changed at the source. The Berliner Philharmoniker's 2nd trumpet now reads "Application deadline: will be announced later" on the orchestra's vacancies overview, with the audition in the 2026/27 season. The Orchestre symphonique de Québec's principal and assistant principal double bass, whose audition is on 21 September, closed to applications on 31 August; the posting states $57,130 and $52,560 for a 32-week season, for the record. And the New York Philharmonic's auditions page currently says: "There are currently no auditions open for application."

If you are reading this after 7 October, every row above has closed and the live board is the place to look.

The shape of the month

Before the deadlines, the field. The 332 performance vacancies break down by the instrument tags in our index as follows: violin 89, viola 45, double bass 30, horn 27, cello 24, trumpet 18, oboe 17, trombone 15, clarinet 14, flute 12, bassoon 7, tuba 6, percussion 5, with 24 notices carrying no instrument tag. By country, after merging the codes and names the index uses interchangeably and filling in the country from the orchestra where a listing has none: United States 130, Germany 99, Finland 14, Belgium 13, France 10, Australia 9, Canada 7, Switzerland 7, Austria 5, and 20 with no country recorded. One hundred and forty-nine of the 332 titles are principal, solo, concertmaster or Vorspieler chairs.

The 29 closing rows follow that shape. Fifteen are in the United States, eight in Germany or Austria, three in Belgium, one each in the Netherlands, Finland and Canada. Seventeen of the 29 rows are string chairs, four are horns, two oboes, two flutes or piccolos, two percussion, one bassoon and one chorus call.

What the notices say about money

This is a comparison we have not seen another listing service print side by side, and it is the reason to read the table twice.

Helsinki prints the salary. The Helsinki Philharmonic's second concertmaster notice gives a monthly range, 4,164.71 to 4,789.42 euros, which is 49,977 to 57,473 euros a year before the maintenance allowances. The same page lists the first concertmaster post that opens for auditions in May 2027 at 4,992.49 to 5,741.36 euros a month, with the application date still to be announced. A Finnish applicant knows the number before deciding whether to fly.

Germany prints nothing, and expects you to know. Neither Bielefeld's two chairs nor Nürnberg's two horn posts say a word about pay; a German player reads them knowing the figure sits in a published table, the TVK for concert and theatre orchestras or the NV Bühne for the stage houses, where pay is set by the orchestra's pay group. The notice does not say which. The exception is the academy: Nürnberg's two Orchesterakademie places state 1,150 euros a month gross, plus pension.

America prints the minimum, or the service rate, or nothing. The two full-time American chairs closing this month both state a floor: Houston's second oboe at $113,360, the 2025-26 minimum, for a 52-week season with nine weeks' paid holiday, San Diego's two section violins at $112,965 for 42 weeks plus a $3,000 media guarantee. Below that tier the number is a weekly or annual rate on a part-year contract: The Florida Orchestra's viola chairs at $52,514.43 for 37 weeks, Jacksonville's violins at $1,413.07 a week for 40 weeks, which is $56,522.80, Virginia's second bassoon at $36,703.80, Hartford's Violin I at $16,245.46 for 98 guaranteed services. Below that again is the per-service orchestra: Elgin $217.01, Hartford's cello chair $165.77, Quad City $147 for a principal and $105 for a section player, Stockton $140. Nine of the American notices, from six orchestras, ask for a refundable deposit with the application, $35 to $100 where the amount is printed; San Diego names the deposit but not the sum. The practice does not appear in any European notice in the table.

The opera pits and the top orchestras print nothing. Arizona Opera's three chairs, Opera Ballet Vlaanderen's three, the Concertgebouw's solo percussion, the Berlin Philharmonic's two cellos, San Diego's substitute timpani and the four German chairs in Bielefeld and Nürnberg give no figure; the Volksoper says the salary is individual. That is fourteen of the 29. For the Concertgebouw and Berlin the omission reads as a statement in itself: the applicant is expected to know. For a chorus tenor in Antwerp on a temporary contract for one production, it is a question that will be answered only at the offer.

Put the extremes of the table together and the spread inside one month of deadlines runs from $16,245 a year in Hartford to $113,360 in Houston, with the two full-time American floors at roughly double the largest part-year salary in the table and three times Virginia's. Cadenza's salary guide gives the tiers behind those numbers; the notices above are the primary sources.

A year from now

Every row in this table is a name on next autumn's appointments ledger. Cadenza's September podium ledger recorded four conductors and five orchestral chairs taking up posts this month; each began as a notice like the ones above. The Berlin cellos will be decided on 19 and 20 November, Helsinki's second concertmaster on 2 and 3 November, Houston's oboe on 1 December. When they are announced, we will link back here.

If you apply

• Deadlines in the table are application deadlines as posted by the orchestra on 7 September, except Elgin's, which is the deposit deadline. Check the notice before you send anything; orchestras move dates.
• Five of the American orchestras (Stockton, Hartford, Jacksonville, Elgin, San Diego) and Virginia require a refundable deposit with the application. Quad City states that it does not.
• Bielefeld, Nürnberg, Opera Ballet Vlaanderen, Helsinki and the Concertgebouw take applications through Muvac; Berlin uses its own web form and the Volksoper takes a PDF by email.
• Berlin, the Volksoper and Bielefeld prescribe concertos or set pieces; the rest give repertoire on request or after application.
• Every listing above, and the 300 or so that do not close this month, is on the jobs board, free to musicians.

The orchestras that print the number have answered the first question every applicant asks. The question for the thirteen that print nothing is the one every candidate asks first, and the one the appointments will not answer: why should a player be expected to guess?

Sources: the orchestra notices linked in each row of the table, all fetched on 7 September 2026; New York Philharmonic auditions; Berliner Philharmoniker vacant positions; Orchestre symphonique de Québec auditions; Cadenza listings API, jobs lane (total 492 on 7 September) and all lanes (735); Cadenza salary guide.

Cover photograph: The Helsinki Music Centre, home of the Helsinki Philharmonic, whose second concertmaster notice closes on 20 September and states the salary. Leonhard Lenz, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons.