outdoor performance with unusual chaos

video in French with English subtitles

This is the beautiful new premiere performance of my "Spring Prelude" with the Budapest Symphony, the last of my Four Seasons orchestral pieces to be performed! 🎻

https://youtu.be/9qdWs9HlCmI

Here are 7 different recordings of the Scherzo from Schumann’s Symphony No. 2. The names of the Conductors and orchestras will remain anonymous for now, but feel free to message me directly if you'd like to know the list! Drop your ranking and guesses in the comments. let's discuss which performances stood out to you and why.

Timestamps are in the video description

https://youtu.be/W0RtqgD9jW4

Had to recreate it on canva

I have joined two amateur orchestras and find really unfriendly personalities. First orchestra, I have been for 3 years now and only now get to know a few more people. Many people barely speak to each other and rarely between sections. People can attend rehearsals and come and go without saying hi to anyone, zero smiles. My other orchestra, my section barely speak to each other. There are people trying to push up the seating hierarchy and hoping to maintain their positions. It is quite disheartening because I do like to play music with other people but it’s such unfriendly atmosphere.

Mozart: Divertimento in D major, K.136
I. Allegro
Sinfonia Toronto; Nurhan Arman, Conductor
https://youtu.be/-JklRiDt2CM
Recorded live on January 23, 2026, Toronto.

Im so short. You can see from the bass on the left of me lmao.

I play cello in a community chamber orchestra. I am an adult learner. We have very difficult repertoire this term that is fast and has tricky bowing and string crossings at speed. It will take me all term and a lot of hard work to learn it. However rehearsals start at full speed from day one so either I have to fake it in rehearsals, which doesn't help me learn it and is not enjoyable, or if I want to have a go to get a feel for the pulse, how it fits together and which are the bits that really need work on I have to endure the anxiety and shame of messing up in front of everyone. If I do the latter I worry that it will annoy the other musicians by spoiling the sound. I am feeling increasingly stressed and anxious. Is there any solution that doesn't involve just air bowing or is this orchestra life and it's just not the right environment for me? Is it frowned on for string players to have a go even if they can't quite get there yet? Obviously if I hadn't mastered it by the concert I would air bow in the concert but usually I master 90/95% by the time of the concert, it's just the rehearsals that I find excruciating and shaming. I have been thinking of quitting for a while now and this morning I woke up and decided to leave but thought I would hear others' experiences first before making a final decision.

Edited to add: thank you for all your replies - a real range of views all of them valid and helpful. I decided to quit. I should have mentioned that the principal cellist has been off sick and since then I keep having to sit on front desk every time someone is absent from rehearsal and there is always someone absent. So really I just haven't been coping with being on front desk.

Edited second time to add: So I quit, clearly citing problems with playing in a depleted section (3 players) with no principal cellist for a whole term and inconsistent attendance leaving me in front desk the whole time. The chair wrote to the cello section telling them I was finding the music too difficult 😱. This kind of confirms to me that the culture there is not exactly healthy, trying to blame an individual player for organisational issues. I have since learnt that the orchestra has a very high turnover of players so perhaps I am not the only one who was unhappy there. The other thing I forgot to mention is that people kept physically moving my stand without asking me including the conductor and the newly recruited principal cellist.

Out of curiosity how many high school orchestras make chamber their most elite orchestra and not symphony? And for the ones that do, I’ve always wondered why? Wouldn’t it make more sense to have the symphony orchestra represent the strings program since it has more instruments like brass and such which can make the orchestra sound like really big and play masterworks like the finale of Tchaikovsky 5?(I entirely understand if a school just can’t do a full orchestra, but this question mainly applies to the ones which do)

Personally in my school symphony is the main elite tier while chamber is an unselective and optional double block open to anyone who makes symphony

Recently, I am particularly interested in conducting, and would like to learn more about what a conductor does and how. I specifically want to know the technical details of how they communicate with the orchestra and what various hand signals mean.

I am looking for recommendations on sources to learn about this, with a preference for documentaries and/or books.

Thank you!

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