Thread: All-Time Symphony Orchestra

Hello Talk Classical!
I just joined a few minutes ago and am very happy to! I've been looking around for someplace besides the orchestra I play in where I can talk about classical music without getting teased or totally ignored. I also tried registering at Gramophone but everybody there immediately decided they hated me for some reason...

For my first thread, I decided to post this list I made a while back: the All-time Symphony Orchestra, consisting of the best players from the late-19th century to the present day (for some reason, this is what made everybody at Gramophone get so ticked off). You will notice that the string section largely consists of the best soloists rather than the best orchestral players, with the exception of the double bass section. This is because I couldn't seem to find any orchestral players, since everybody on the Internet was talking Perlman, Tartini, Kreisler, etc. But in the winds, I did in fact select orchestral musicians.

Too bad we could never see this group play together, because a lot of the musicians are dead, dying or just really aging. Besides, the amount of ego would stretch to Pluto and back 50 times. Maybe someone could make a computer simulation of a group like this, but even that wouldn't do justice to how they would really sound.

Here is the All-Time Symphony Orchestra! Enjoy, and please don't hesitate to make suggestions, I'm always trying to improve it!

Violin 1: Itzhack Perlman, concertmaster, Jascha Heifetz, associate concertmaster, Giueseppe Tartini, Fritz Kreisler, David Oistrakh, Mischa Elman, Yehudi Menuhin, Tomo Milicevic, Pablo de Sarasate

Violin 2: Philippe Quint, Jacques Thibaud, Isaac Stern, Joshua Bell, Hilary Hahn, Arthur Grimaux, Zino Francescatti, Robert McDuffie, Ida Haendel, Georges Enesco

Viola: Yuri Bashmet, Nobuko Imai, Lionel Tertis, William Primrose, Lawrence Power

Cello: Yo-Yo Ma, Pablo Casals, Jacqueline du Pre, Gregor Piatagorsky, Emanuel Fuerman, Pierre Fournier, Mstislav Rostropovich

Double Bass: Gerald Drucker, Eugene Levinson, Oscar Zimmerman, Ludwig Streicher

Flute: Geoffrey Gilbert, Jeffrey Kahner, Michel DeBost, Marcel Moyse

Oboe: John Mack, Alex Klein

Clarinet: Larry Combs, Karl Leister

Bassoon: Bernard Garfield, William Waterhouse, Judith LeClair, Sol Schoenbach

Horn: John Cerminaro, Dale Clevenger, Philip Myers, Dennis Brain

Trumpet: Adolph Herseth, William Vacchiano, Phillip Collins

Trombone: Jay Friedman, Denis Wick, Ian Bousfield, Joseph Alessi

Bass Trombone: Dave Stewart

Tuba: Gene Pokorny, John Fletcher

Timpani: Edward Harrison

Percussion: Howard van Hyning, James Blades, Antonio Buonomo

Now the conductor is another issue. It's extremely hard to say one great conductor is better than another. Nevertheless, here's a few suggestions. Again, don't hesitate to make suggestions yourself: Igor Markevitch, Leonard Bernstein, Andre Previn, Zubin Mehta, Leopold Stokowski, Claudio Abbado, Fritz Reiner, Herbert von Karajan, Sir George Solti

Hope you've enjoyed!

There are a few double bass soloists , th emost famous one being probably Gary Karr, who has made a number of recoridngs. The legendary Russian conductor started out a bass virtuoso , and Zubin Mehta
also played bass before he became a conductor . Giovanni Bottesini was the most famous bass player of the 19th century, and some of his music has been recorded .

Don't know exactly ...
London, Berlin and Chicago orchestras have been really great.

I also know that Yo-Yo Ma is very talented with Cello.

You've got the ratio of strings:everyone else wrong. Nice big bassoon section though.

If you listen to recordings of the brass musicians I listed you'll see why there's not so many of them compared to the strings. A lot of them are former Chicago Symphony players, so yeah....
I can't tell if the whole string section is too big or if the woodwinds are too small, though. I tried to put in the average amount of musicians per instrument.

Originally Posted by ComposerOfAvantGarde

You've got the ratio of strings:everyone else wrong. Nice big bassoon section though.

He could use a few more violas, though.

Originally Posted by Klavierspieler

He could use a few more violas, though.

Possibly not if they are all playing Tertis model violas.

I like the idea.

Of course, it would be completely impractical - most soloists are poor team players, and most team players aren't good enough to be soloists. Rehearsals would probably degenerate into a bread fight rather soon!

Originally Posted by Gordontrek

If you listen to recordings of the brass musicians I listed you'll see why there's not so many of them compared to the strings. A lot of them are former Chicago Symphony players, so yeah....
I can't tell if the whole string section is too big or if the woodwinds are too small, though. I tried to put in the average amount of musicians per instrument.

I'm talkin' about the string sections being too small​

All soloists and 1st chairs? Dumb!

To play most works in the repertoire, you're talking about fielding a regular orchestra of

4 flutes (some doubling alto flute and/or piccolo)
4 oboes (some doubling cor anglais)
4 clarinets
2-3 bassoons
one or more extras for the more obscure wind instruments - contrabass bassoons and so on
4 horns
4 trumpets
4 trombones
2-3 tubas/euphoniums etc
piano/other keyboards (eg celeste)
harp
2 sets timpani
absolute minimum 2 percussion
10 violin I
10 violin II
10 viola
8 cello
6-8 double bass

Of course, session players would be drafted in to meet excessive requirements, whether the 8 horns needed for Mahler 3 or the extensive percussion needed for many post 1945 works.

Originally Posted by Jeremy Marchant

To play most works in the repertoire, you're talking about fielding a regular orchestra of

4 flutes (some doubling alto flute and/or piccolo)
4 oboes (some doubling cor anglais)
4 clarinets
2-3 bassoons
one or more extras for the more obscure wind instruments - contrabass bassoons and so on
4 horns
4 trumpets
4 trombones
2-3 tubas/euphoniums etc
piano/other keyboards (eg celeste)
harp
2 sets timpani
absolute minimum 2 percussion
10 violin I
10 violin II
10 viola
8 cello
6-8 double bass

Of course, session players would be drafted in to meet excessive requirements, whether the 8 horns needed for Mahler 3 or the extensive percussion needed for many post 1945 works.

I'd say more like a string section of 16/14/12/10/8. Also 6 horns instead of 4 is I think the standard in most orchestras.

Originally Posted by Gordontrek

Now the conductor is another issue. It's extremely hard to say one great conductor is better than another. Nevertheless, here's a few suggestions. Again, don't hesitate to make suggestions yourself: Igor Markevitch, Leonard Bernstein, Andre Previn, Zubin Mehta, Leopold Stokowski, Claudio Abbado, Fritz Reiner, Herbert von Karajan, Sir George Solti

This is a pitiful selection. It comes down to Mahler, Toscanini or Furtwangler. If you're desperate for names from the last 50 years, you might propose Carlos Kleiber or Celibidache.

Oh, and you need Jack Brymer on clarinet.

GG

Conductor, ehhhh......JOHN ELIOT GARDINER

Also it's funny that no one has mentioned Anne-Sophie Mutter in the violin section.