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Chicago, IL - The Chicago Symphony will offer their principal clarinet position to whoever wins the Metropolitan Opera’s upcoming principal clarinet audition, according to the CSO’s Twitter page.

The CSO found itself back at square one last December when Steve Williamson, who joined the orchestra as principal clarinet in the fall of 2011, announced that he had accepted the same position with the New York Philharmonic.

“We need a cheap and easy solution to this long and drawn out problem,” CSO President Deborah Rutter said in an interview. “Stealing from the Met has worked out great for us in the past with Steve and [principal oboist] Eugene [Izotov], so we feel pretty good about this.”

The CSO has held four clarinet auditions since Larry Combs retired at the end of the 2007-08 season. The musicians of the orchestra are reportedly relieved that they won’t have to sit through a fifth.

“I’m just glad I won’t have to go through that ordeal again,” said one veteran committee member who served on all four clarinet auditions. “Sure, it stinks for all the supposedly great candidates who keep spending all that money on airfare and lodging just to come play the first page of the Mozart Concerto, but it’s even worse for us on the other side of the screen. We’d occasionally feel bad for somebody and let them play a couple excerpts, but Beethoven 6 really gets old after awhile.”

The CSO failed to fill the position at its first three clarinet auditions, either because the winning candidate turned down the orchestra’s offer or because no winner was declared. When asked if something similar could happen at the Met audition, Rutter sounded confident that it wouldn’t.

“Somehow, the Met always picks a winner, even with all those strange audition procedures,” Rutter said. “They leave the screen up for the whole audition, they don’t invite anybody straight to the finals, and they have this weird round between the prelims and the finals, called the semifinals or something. And yet, they never come up empty handed like we do.”

While Rutter is confident with the idea of poaching the Met audition, she’s not totally without frustration. “We really thought we had our guy this last time when we hired Steve,” she said. “I mean, we let him audition on his own day, we put him all over that movie soundtrack [Lincoln], then he goes back to New York? It’s only fitting that we steal whoever wins Steve’s old job at the Met - it’ll be a great way to stick it to that whole city!”

When asked if she was concerned that the winner of the Met audition might not accept the CSO’s offer, Rutter chuckled. “Come on, seriously? Does anyone really want to sit in a pit for the rest of their life? We’re the Chicago Symphony!”