Composers have been writing music for the group of instruments we call an orchestra for the last four centuries. Endlessly adaptable and always evolving, an orchestra can be made up of 20 players or ...

Orchestras began tuning to the oboe, in part, because its sound was more penetrating in a performance setting than gut strings. There were also fewer oboes than violins, and in the earliest orchestras ...

Elgar's Introduction and Allegro, scored for solo string quartet and string orchestra, is one of the central pinnacles of the orchestral repertoire. In 1904, a crisis arose when Sir Henry Wood, ...

A group of youngsters in red silk Mandarin-collared shirts are plucking, beating or blowing into Asian musical instruments that generate delicately trembling and airy melodies. The young musicians ...