I went into the concert hoping that we as an orchestra would listen to each other and play the best that we could as a synergized unit. The past several rehearsals that we had had were successful in increasing our unity, creating more dynamic contrast, and focusing more on musicality instead of perfection of the notes.
I believe that we exhibited all of these things within our performance at the concert, especially during our performance of The Holberg Suite. I was most worried about this piece, as we had struggled with staying together and achieving a great dynamic contrast between the piano and sforzando notes. Additionally, the violas struggled with A1 to B specifically in this piece, causing me to worry about how that would sound onstage. However, after listening to the recording, I found that Holberg was our best piece that evening because we managed to stay together throughout, achieved a noticeable amount of dynamic contrast, and pulled it together at A1.
Although we succeeded at Holberg, we struggled a bit more with Olympic Fanfare, Slavonic Dances, and Radetzky March because the string and band sections were not together. I think that the band members got a bit excited (and were also hindered by their distance from Dr. Wang) and rushed ahead of the strings. This caused a sort of disarray that was difficult to correct. However, we managed to stay together after rough beginnings and improved in other areas, like dynamics.
If we were to play this concert again, I would focus on consistency between sections, not only so that everyone has the correct tempo and timing, but also so that the balance was better. At some points the combination of brass and strings overpowered the harps, for example. In preparation for our next concert, we should focus on synergy, musicality, dynamic contrast, and phrasing.
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