Inside Simon Rattle’s All-Amateur Orchestra At The Berlin Philharmonie

George Gelles, the former executive director of San Francisco’s Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra and a lifelong (though never pro) French horn player, writes about taking part in the Be Phil Orchestra, 101 non-professional musicians from the world over, chosen by online audition, who spent a week getting coached by members of the Berlin Philharmonic, rehearsing and performing Brahms’s First Symphony under Simon Rattle.