Grading Dynamics While Playing In An Orchestra

Orchestral playing requires first and foremost discipline - especially inside a section (i.e. strings). It is a about letting go the individual for the sake of the whole. This has many difficult challenges in different aspects of orchestral playing such as the expressive interpretation, rhythm, articulation and dynamic.

I am going to address the dynamic issue in this article. The dynamic in both solo and orchestral music is highly relative - as it has to be seen in context and has also the meaning of character (i.e. piano, apart from soft, can mean a more passive or active character depending on the scale of dynamics used by the composer). As such, it is important to judge several factors present in the context of a given passage - namely what the role of the motif played has in the overall texture.

Also, while playing in an Orchestra, one has a lot more possibilities for dynamic than when playing solo or chamber music because, funnily enough, the more people that are playing, the louder and the softer the dynamic can become. This is due to the fact that with a large section, everyone can play a lot softer and the "micro" amount of sound produced individuallly gains enough consistency to produce and consistent shimmer of sound creating a mesmerizing atmosphere.

Another component of the dynamic interpretation is how to produce the dynamic written in a section (i.e. strings). During my experience as an orchestral player, I have learnt that if, for instance, in the score is written piano (I will admit that a piano passage implicates a passive non-important accompaniment) one has to play at least pianissimo and when it writes pp then the individual sound must be something inaudible for the player and so on. I know that this must sound somehow intuitive but I find that the speed at which every member of an orchestra fulfills these instructions is proportional to the quality of the transparency of the interpretation. And why is that? Because the softer one plays, the more one listens the more one listens, the more together it is the more together it is, the more time can be spent speaking about interpretation and therefore the time of rehearsal is more efficiently used.

Louder dynamics require a more instinctive approach although keeping in mind that one should always be able to listen to what everyone else is playing as this is the most effective tool in any orchestral environment.