Symphony No. 14 (Shostakovich) - Forces

Forces

Besides the soloists, the symphony is scored for a chamber orchestra consisting of only strings and percussion. The strings consist of ten violins, four violas, three cellos, and two double basses, and the percussion section (three players) includes wood block, castanets, whip, soprano, alto and tenor tom-toms, xylophone, campane, vibraphone, and celesta. Interestingly, the percussion section does not include common instruments such as timpani, bass drum, cymbals, or triangle.


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