Are we missing a lot of the subtleties of great works by not dividing strings?
For any piece written before around 1920-30, we can lose an awful lot. From the Baroque right through to Mahler and beyond, composers often used the ‘opposed’ seating of first and second violins. This is nothing to do with Toscanini. Mozart and Haydn often used to play-off the violins in this way – tossing-around melodies back and forth. This is completely lost when the sections are next to each other. Mahler often used the first and second violins as completely independent sections and would play on the fact that they would be on opposite sides of the stage. Even Tchaikovsky used the effect – such as in the pizzicato scherzo of the Fourth Symphony and at the beginnnig of the final movement of the Pathétique Symphony. Did you realise that, at the very beginning of this movement, no-one actually plays the melody? Each note is played alternately by the first and second violins (and they alternative the harmony notes accordingly as well) – which Tchaikovsky expected to come from oppsite s
