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Thank you, maelstromtempest, Voce, and goodridge_winners! I found it quite challenging to work with this instrumentation and you are very right, maelstromtempest, that the strings and horns are quite dominant. I actually had imagined the oboes to come out a bit more than they did and often the woodwinds got a bit drowned out at some places. I've already changed some of the dynamics since the concert, to make the strings and horns quieter when the woodwinds really need to stick out and in the revised score I may cut back on horn usage a bit (in favour of more dominant bassoon parts, for example). I didn't have any experience with such a really classical orchestra before, so the orchestration isn't optimal everywhere. And due to the low number of tutti strings, the "solo vs. tutti" effects in the strings didn't really work out very well either. (I didn't know for sure how many strings there would be playing beforehand.)
Another obvious fault on my part was writing too complex rhythms. I had already simplified them quite a bit, but I really need to go over them again and simplify them more. The problem is that if the orchestra has to concentrate too much on the rhythms, other elements such as phrasing, articulation and dynamics are easily forgotten, plus some passages will sound very timid, as the musicians are too afraid of playing at the wrong time.
Apart from all these (and many more) mistakes of me, it was an awesome experience and I was really happy with the performance.
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