I heard some delicious gossip from a major midwestern orchestra the other day, namely that the music director re-seated the first violin section after the following series of events happened:
1) Gave instructions about dynamics to the violins, asking that they be noted in the parts.
2) Concerts came and went, dynamics were largely not played by said violin section.
3) Music director blows a gasket, looks at all the violin parts to see which ones had been marked, and which hadn’t.
4) Re-seated the violins so that every non-marker would sit with a marker.
5) Hilarity ensued.
I’m sure that (5) did not happen, and I haven’t heard confirmation of this story, but if anyone knows the real poop, I’d love to hear it from the horse’s mouth, so to speak…