But how does a large orchestra work?

Italy gave the world the musical notes invented by a monk, Guido of Arezzo, about a millennium ago. And then Gregorian chant, Renaissance music, the great masters of the Baroque to arrive at nineteenth-century melodrama. Despite this, music education does not find its place in school. It all boils down to a few brief hints of the history of music, relegated to history and literature textbooks, and, if you're lucky, to some notions of flute and guitar learned fleetingly in middle school. The result is that for most of us, music and, above all, all the mechanisms that revolve around a performance remain a mystery. Maybe for decades we have been listening to the New Year's concert performed in Vienna by the Wiener Philharmoniker every year, but without having a clear understanding of how an orchestra works or even what an orchestra really is.

Coming to our aid is the composer Nicola Campogrande with his "Journey to the center of the orchestra" (BUR Rizzoli, 2023, pp. 176, also e-book), an agile "manual" that leads us to the discovery of the small and large secrets that revolve around classical music. A journey, that of Campogrande, which starts from questions that perhaps we have asked ourselves a thousand times, but without then satiating our curiosity: but who is part of an orchestra? What role do the different tools have and how do they combine with each other? What does a conductor do and how does he guide musicians? But how do the various members of an orchestra know by heart the parts they have to perform? But also, simply: when you read a score, how do you turn the page without having to take your hands off the instrument?

Nicola Campogrande answers all these questions (and many more) and shows us what happens inside the "orchestra condominium" before, during and after a concert. Furthermore, it tells us about the evolution of orchestral formations over time , explains the mechanisms with which musicians contribute to the construction of collective harmony and reveals secrets and behind the scenes of the most loved concert pieces. Journey to the center of the orchestra thus turns out to be not only a useful tool for knowledge and in-depth study, but a listening guide for the curious and passionate, a volume to immerse oneself in the wonder of orchestral music in a more conscious way. Because, as the author explains: «The beauty, the emotion, the surprise, the excitement, the joy given by a piece played by an orchestra are precious gifts; and a more conscious listening can multiply them, polish them, make them more intense."