Guide
Symphony Orchestra vs. Chamber Orchestra
The same instrument families, at very different scale.
The distinction between a symphony orchestra and a chamber orchestra is mostly a matter of size, but that size difference shapes almost everything else about how each one sounds and what it's suited to play. The name echoes chamber music for the same reason: a smaller group, suited to a smaller room.
Size
A full symphony orchestra typically runs somewhere from 70 to over 100 musicians, with a large string section (often 30+ violins alone), a full complement of woodwinds and brass, and an expanded percussion section. A chamber orchestra is much smaller, generally somewhere around 20 to 50 players, with proportionally fewer strings and often a reduced or entirely absent brass and percussion section.
Section by section
Exact numbers vary, but a rough comparison looks like this:
- Strings - a large symphony orchestra might have 16 first violins, 14 seconds, 12 violas, 10 cellos, and 8 basses; a chamber orchestra might have 6 or 8 first violins and just two or three basses.
- Woodwinds - a symphony orchestra often has three or four of each instrument, plus piccolo, English horn, and bass clarinet; a chamber orchestra usually has two of each, or fewer.
- Brass - a symphony orchestra typically has four or more horns, three trumpets, three trombones, and a tuba; a chamber orchestra may have just two horns and two trumpets, or none at all.
- Percussion - a symphony orchestra's percussion section can fill the back of the stage; a chamber orchestra often has only timpani.
Repertoire
Chamber orchestras are the natural home for Baroque and early Classical-era music, written before orchestras had grown to their later Romantic-era size - a Vivaldi concerto or early Haydn symphony was composed with an ensemble roughly this size in mind. Haydn's orchestra at the Esterházy court had only around two dozen players. Full symphony orchestras are built to handle the much larger scale of Romantic and later repertoire, including works that specifically require the extra brass, percussion, and string weight that later composers wrote into their scores.
Many symphony orchestras play Mozart and Haydn too, often with a slimmed-down string section, and many chamber orchestras commission new works written for their size. The boundary is flexible.
Sound and venue
A smaller ensemble naturally produces a more transparent, detailed sound, with individual lines easier to pick out, and often performs in smaller halls suited to that scale. A full symphony orchestra is built for volume and weight, capable of filling a large concert hall with the kind of sound a Mahler or Strauss score demands. Chamber orchestras can also be more agile: some, like New York's Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, perform without a conductor at all.
What's in a name?
Orchestra names can be confusing. "Symphony orchestra" and "philharmonic orchestra" mean the same thing - a full-size orchestra - and many cities have one of each, named differently only for historical reasons. A sinfonietta is a small orchestra, and a string orchestra uses strings alone. A Baroque orchestra or period-instrument orchestra plays on historical instruments, usually at chamber-orchestra size.
Famous examples
- Symphony orchestras - the Berlin Philharmonic, the Vienna Philharmonic, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the London Symphony Orchestra.
- Chamber orchestras - the Academy of St Martin in the Fields, the Chamber Orchestra of Europe, the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra.
Neither is "better" - each is simply the right tool for the repertoire it was built to play. Our orchestra seating chart shows how a full orchestra fits together.