Yes, in the sense that the second- and third-chair parts usually contain inner harmonic lines rather than exposed melodic lines. On the other hand, in the woodwind section, it’s usually a lower-chair player who’s responsible for one of the “specialty” instruments like piccolo or contrabassoon.
Tell that to Bobby Cornrow.
There’s safety in numbers. A small mistake will be hidden by the other players.
My high school orchestra had class every school day. The entire class was spent learning and rehearsing a specific piece.
We sometimes had a after-school practice just before a public performance.
I was in the 2nd violin section. There was at least 12 playing the same part. I found myself being swept along. I didn’t have to think about counting rhythm. If I was a little off pitch it was covered up by the other people. It didn’t happen often. I was listening to the other players and playing in tune or very close. 
Also, seating was important. The first two rows were our best players. The weakest were on the back row. The public mostly heard the front rows of players.
We’ve all been in a landing or two where it felt like we just landed on a carrier. A lot of those pilots are not ex-Navy. 
I once watched a jet land at Sky Harbor on a hot summer afternoon, and the plane got stuck in ground effect and sailed halfway down the runway steady at 30 feet above it. I’m sure the passengers never noticed, but any pilot watching sure did!.
As for symphonies never making a mistake, I will mention that we pay attemtion to the performers at the Phoenix Symphony, and they often sit in different places at different performances. Quite possibly because they have been making mistakes and get demoted.
That’s so true.
In my experience, if I start focusing on what I’m playing, then I’m sure to hit a flub. The best playing that I do is when I stop thinking and let my fingers run over the keys. So, I have a choice between playing with some interpretative intention and messing things up, or playing flawlessly but blandly.
This doesn’t apply to pieces I’m learning because then I’m constantly focusing on the best fingerings, while still playing wrong notes all the time. I’m currently working on the Fauré’s 1st Nocturne, and the accidentals are a real pain. But at least, I can chalk my mistakes up to having just started sight-reading this, which doesn’t fly as an excuse for pieces I’ve played for years and years.
At some point, the meaning of “mistake” needs to be dissected. Rarely are pieces performed exactly as scored. The composer themselves don’t always capture their own intent in the score. And then the conductor puts their own interpretations on how the parts fit together. And the musicians as well interpret pieces in a particular way. And finally each member of the audience experiences a performance in their idiosyncratic way.
Is playing a note differently than scored a “mistake” if it successfully transmits the composer’s original intent? That’s always going to be subjective.
An actual different pitch? Yeah, I think that’s a mistake.
A different tempo or feel? Maybe not. But I’m pretty sure every professional conductor would say that you can’t change the actual notes on the page. But I’m very happy to be corrected if someone has first-hand experience with a conductor or performer saying “nope, sorry Beethoven, F# better captures the mood of the piece here than F”.
Thanks to all for the informative responses.
I don’t think there’s any need to disparage jazz musicians here. Charlie Parker famously practiced 8-10 hours a day, as did Coltrane and many others.
Get back to me when you can improvise like those guys.
I figure this is as good a thread to ask as any other: I wouldn’t be able, for the life of my, to tell a bravura performance by a virtuoso violinist on a Stradivarius, from an acceptable performance by an acceptable musician on an acceptable violin. Can fans of classical music really tell the difference? Are you able to tell, when you’ve left the concert hall, that you’ve experienced something truly special?
Another side issue is that when it comes to performance, avoiding mistakes isn’t the point, playing well is the point. Depending on the situation, you may want to be less conservative, more aggressive/flamboyant, and leave more of an impression that way. A musician who makes zero mistakes and is always focused on making zero mistakes may result in a boring, flavorless, bland but correct performance.
Now imagine the session musicians on orchestral film scores who are asked to get their part perfect in one take without having all of those hours upon hours to practice and perfect their parts. Mistakes mean a second take and if you do that more than a couple times, you won’t get hired again. These guys, day in and day out, walk into a studio, sit down in front of a piece of new music, sometimes dozens of pages long, and sightread it perfectly. That’s where the real pressure is.
“I don’t think there’s any need to disparage jazz musicians here. Charlie Parker famously practiced 8-10 hours a day, as did Coltrane and many others.”
Like my College jazz instructor was fond of saying “if you play a wrong note in jazz then play it 2 more times and it will become a right note.”
The soul of jazz is improvization, it’s different. Classical music pares really well with OCD. Jazz people pares with people who aren’t sticklers at coloring inside the lines at all times.
I’ve known a number of accomplished classical musicians who had no ability whatsoever to improvise. The idea of composing on the spot is terrifying to them.
I like YouTube videos of orchestras performing classical pieces, like the Beethoven symphonies. Usually, I pick the ones from the Vienna Philharmonic or another top orchestra and am sitting there marveling that every single one of those musicians, even the guy on the kettle drum, is at the top of his or her game, and better than thousands out there who play the same instrument. It’s also fun to watch the different ways the conductors do their thing.
Sometimes even top performers may make a mistake, I happened to just see a Youtube short of Martha Argerich making a glaring error.
It is at least theoretically possible for there to be a typo or mistake and therefore one will have to figure out the composer’s true original intent. See discussions like
https://notat.io/viewtopic.php?t=1036
A friend of mine and his wife are both excellent musicians. He plays guitar like Jerry Garcia and she’s a classical pianist. It’s literally not possible for them to play together.
There are exceptions though. Bela Fleck can do both on banjo.
This.
I just watched this documentary about film score composers, which features many scenes in recording studios with session musicians. At one point, someone asks, “How much do they rehearse before they record?” To which the answer is, not at all. It’s amazing.
I highly recommend the film.
I take exception to this. This is what music snobs, and people that make mistakes, say.
To perform the piece exactly as written can never be “boring, flavorless and bland” unless you’re going to say the composer wrote a boring, flavorless and bland piece. Especially a piece by someone like Beethoven, who not only obsessed over every detail, but was deaf. He only heard the piece in his head, so the notes as written are exactly what he wanted. So to say, “my mistake give it life”, well, that’s the height of arrogance.
I think a lot of critics would disagree. There’s a difference between impassioned, inspired playing and solid, mistake-free performance. It’s not a question of changing melodies, but humans definitely change every piece subtly in terms of dynamics and very slight changes in when notes are hit. And when I say slight, I mean almost microscopic. But when it’s all combined, the performance is iconic as opposed to simply “correct.”