So long as the piece is simple (if weвЂ™re sight reading) or weвЂ™ve practiced it a lot (for more complex pieces) it goes fairly smoothly. In band out director actually will go sit down and tell a completely random person to start the piece with a big breath (or something). IsnвЂ™t that basically what a chamber orchestra is? Granted chaber is a lot smaller, but usually they donвЂ™t perform with a conductor.ДЄnyway itвЂ™s not too bad without a conductor. ThereвЂ™s a lot more to what a piece sounds like than that. During the performance, the conductor is mostly responsible for ensuring that everyone starts and stops at the same time and to give occasional reminders and cues. About 80 percent of the conductorвЂ™s work is done before the performance. The role of a conductor is to guide the orchestra in the direction of his or her idea of what the piece is supposed to sound like. If you stood the conductor up there without rehearsal, the orchestra would just play the piece in whatever ways they were used to playing it. Bringing a new conductor up cold at a performance would range somewhere along the scale from pointless to potentially disastrous. The guest conductor rehearses the orchestra. I thought to myself, вЂњWell, if they just bring this guy in for a night, he must be doing something up there.вЂќ Are the guest conductors usually brought in far enough ahead of time that the orchestra gets the benefit of rehearsing with them? Or is the Special Guest Conductor just a gimmick to lure philistines like me? But then, this weekend, I went to the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra to hear a performance with a Special Guest Conductor. Anyway, I always had an uninformed hunch that the conductor was most important in rehearsals, as a couple folks upthread said. I will preface this by saying that I know nothing about music. (IIRC Hilary Hahn goes faster, but I donвЂ™t have a copy of her recording.) However, this doesnвЂ™t involve the whole orchestra playing at that rate! *I checked Isaac SternвЂ™s conclusion of the Barber violin concerto, too, which clocks in at about 13 quavers/sec. I just did some back-of-the-envelope sums, and for the third movement of SibeliusвЂ™ second symphony (chosen because itвЂ™s a particularly fast one and because IвЂ™ve got a recording handy) I measure it at about 8-10 quavers per second.* The time lag to hear these half-a-note late is as little as 17 metres :eek: (and there was me thinking that the basses are always dragging ) And far more importantly, the sound you are actually hearing might not be dominated by the direct line, but is bouncing around the hall before reaching you. So again, it is safer to trust your eyes than your ears. I imagine the sound lag would be les on a concert stage, but she commented on how difficult it can be to hear different instruments, depending on acoustics, how the band is seated, etc. She also said as a general rule, without a conductor slow pieces will get slower and slower, and fast pieces will speed up. When my daughter blew the entrance, the whole section did as well!

Unknown to her, no one else was counting - instead, they all simply looked to my daughter and waited for her to raise her flute. She is 1st chair flute, and said one time she was uncharacteristically spacing out, and forgot to count the next flute entrance. Far different from my experience playing bass in a rock band, where all I needed to do is get tight with the drummer. And if you canвЂ™t find the lead, look to any percussionist. She said if you are somewhere that you canвЂ™t see the conductor, you look to the lead snare. On a football field, players need to look to the conductor simply because there can be a significant sight/sound lag across the length of the field. She is a sophomore studying music ed, and is more involved in concert and marching bands than orchestras, but I believe some of what she said is relevant here.

I was just talking about something similar with my daughter the other day.

Too damn big orchestra