After a couple of tutti rehearsals, I’m stumped, any tips?

It’s the bit in the 5th movement where most of the orchestra plays 4 bars of syncopated crotchets (over 6/8) then the bones, trumpets and possibly some horns come in at bar 399 with non-syncopated version.

By the time we come in the orchestra has found itself on the downbeat so just following the conductor wasn’t working.

Ideas?

Apart from asking the conductor to stay strict with the beat and just continuing to play to his beat even if that means we are incorrectly in sync with the rest of the orchestra.

Yeah that passage is always problematic. Even some of the best recordings by some of the best orchestras don't get it right. There's nothing you can do to fix it, it's the rest of the group (and the conductor) that needs to get it right. Just play on the downbeats and you've done your job. In my opinion the best solution is for the conductor to stay in 2 (not switching to 3), conduct very simply and straight, with very clear beats 1 and 2, and for everyone to think of it as basically triplets – for the rest of the orchestra, triplets that land on every beat 2, and then for the low horns, trumpets, low brass and timpani, triplets that land on every downbeat. If people try to think of it as syncopations, they drag and end up on the beat. The single hardest part is the piccolo, because they're syncopated like everyone else, but they come in later, in the same bar as the on-the-beat brass, so it's quite hard for them to catch and not go on the beat like the brass, and then they're so strident and audible, if they don't catch it right they have the power to grab and drag all the syncopated people onto the beat and make the whole thing fall apart!

One of the problems there is that conductors very often try to micro-manage the orchestra and keep them in check and strickly in tempo, and I believe in that particular place it's exactly the opposite of what will work. The whole orchestra playing syncopations without anyone playing the downbeats just has way too much inertia to be controlled by the conductor. It's like trying to stop a runaway 18-wheeler by running alongside and trying to slow it down by pulling it back...They're just going to do what they're going to do and there's nothing you can do to stop them. What you CAN do is get out of the way, and target the very little you can control in that place, and that's your own conducting and the beats you show.

As a conductor, those few homorythmic bars before the brass come in are one of the few places in the repertoire I can think of where in performance I'd follow the orchestra instead of the other way around. No matter if they're slightly rushing or dragging, I would not try to correct them, and instead I'd make sure that whatever they're doing, my beats 2 land correctly with the orchestra's displaced "downbeat". Then the brass have a clear beat 1 to aim for, that's in the right place relative to the syncopations. And in that moment where they enter, I'd trust the brass to come in properly on my 1 without my giving them my attention, and focus entirely on getting the piccolo to start right and land their displaced downbeat properly on my 2. If the conductor does that, that section might slow down a bit, but the effect should work. To me that's preferable to staying in tempo but ending up all homorythmic and losing the effect.

Thanks Max, some useful advice there.

It turns out we’re going to have a sectional with a local pro orchestra player/professor so I’ll feed back any useful tips he has here.

On a side note, we had one sectional with low brass already, and I know this may be controversial, but I personally thought it sounded very cool with me playing the 1st part on alto. Also in the full rehearsal I felt like I was really being a link between the trumpets/cornets/horns and the rest of the low brass, resulting in a harmonious and pleasant balance.

The way that Maximilian explained it is exactly how I was taught how to approach this excerpt in a conducting seminar many decades ago. While most professional groups are very aware of this problematic section and know how to handle it, most community and novice groups need a clear explanation of how it works.

I was taught that a group should speak the rhythm “tri-pu-let” (I know the word really only has two syllables) while the conductor is conducting in two. The next step is to have the group rest on beat one and speak the “tri-pu-let” starting on beat 2. Then combine the two (half the group starting on beat 1, half starting on beat 2). Then combine the two, but start with the beat-2 folks first.

Eventually everyone will figure out how it combines. The problem is that you never end up with this spoken combination…..,”tri-tri-pu-pu-let-let.” The is because the people who enter on beat one start their “tri” after the other group has completed the “tri-pu.” Whenever I have done this with a group, they were upset that the ultimate result was not the “tri-tri-pu-pu-let-let” but they figured out how the combined rhythms worked.

When Antal Dorati was the music director of the NSO he first explained the passage, did it half tempo and then at regular tempo as he did his best to stay out of the way. It worked ! I've only heard one or two recordings where it is done correctly. It's a nasty little passage !