Tuba in Chamber Orchestra

[Steve Marcus]

More and more orchestras faced with budget deficits, decline or elimination of funding, etc., are programming pieces with much smaller instrumentation to maintain the orchestra's full annual schedule.

What pieces for chamber orchestra include tuba in the instrumentation?

I'll start off with two examples:

Revueltas: Homanaje a Federico Garcia Lorca
Stravinsky: Suite No. 2 for Small Orchestra

[tbn.al]

Our instrumentation is almost exactly as bloke specified and we program carefully selected full orchestra stuff all the time. The strings have to work their butts off but they don't seem to mind. Coming up, Sym Fantastic and the Planets. Last year Enigma and Dvorak Sym 8. As I said, carefully selected.

http://www.georgiaphilharmonic.org/" target="_blank" target="_blank

[Tom]

If you go on an orchestra of 2222/2231 tmp (or 1 percussion) plus strings, there are (I think) a surprising variety of works available such as:

Stravinsky: Suite No. 1
Mendelssohn: Midsummer Nights Dream and Symphony No. 5
Ives: Symphony No. 3
R. Schumann: Symphony No. 2
Greig: Symphony in C
Vaughan Williams: Symphony No. 5

If you added more percussion, harp, and piano to that, works, the following would be possible:

Ives: Three Places in New England
Ravel: Mother Goose
Vaughan Williams: Symphony No. 8
Poulenc: Babar
Ginastera: Variaciones concertantes

There are quite a few more compositions out there than I noted, but still only about 100 or so total that are "chamber" based that call for tuba.

This is a very interesting thread and I'll be watching closely to see what else gets offered up.

[Mark]

I play in an orchestra formerly designated as a "chamber" orchestra that (more each year) has "expanded" instrumentation.

If a chamber orchestra has REAL "hosses" in the string section, it can expand and play "big" pieces with only 12 violins, 4 violi, 4 celli, 2 basses

And, you don't have to blow your lungs out in the fortissimo sections.

[toobagrowl]

Add Gershwin's "Porgy and Bess". Pretty good tuba parts for this pit orchestra piece.

[Tom]

Not everything you listed calls for tuba (or serpent/etc)

R. Schumann: Symphony No. 2
Greig: Symphony in C
Vaughan Williams: Symphony No. 5
Ravel: Mother Goose
Vaughan Williams: Symphony No. 8

No tuba.

I guess that explains why I didn't know those. I suppose I should have double checked before posting. Oh well...

[Jeff Anderson]

No tuba in Ives' 3rd symphony.

[Wyvern]

can expand and play "big" pieces with only 12 violins, 4 violi, 4 celli, 2 basses

I frequently play in orchestras with no more strings than that and they can quite easily handle such works as Tchaikovsky and Dvorak symphonies (in fact anything which does not require exceptionally large orchestra).

Incidentally I still use my Neptune with orchestras of that size and played with restraint the 6/4 works just fine - in fact the conductor often appreciates the foundation it provides for the ensemble with few basses.