In order to notate in a clear and concise manner, one has to understand how an orchestra will interpret any particular dynamic, rhythm or articulation. For instance, what happens if you give the violins a naked whole note and a piano dynamic marking? Even with a minimum of information, the orchestra will impart some life to that note; there is an organic trajectory to all phrases. Now what if you add an articulation or hairpins? How about at shorter rhythms? What will a pattern of eighth notes sound like at different dynamics or with different articulations? Keep adding and taking away all possible dynamics and articulations and think about how they modify the default. When you develop a better understanding of what orchestral players will do naturally, you will discover a lot of the things you have been writing in are not necessary.
When we put something new in front of an orchestra, they have no performance practice reference, as they would in the case of Mozart, Tchaikovsky, or Prokofiev. We must understand then how the orchestra will interpret the notation when they have no reference; what is the default? Defaults are a little different for each instrument, as they are based not just on how players read the notes, but also on the physics of their instruments.
Having orchestrated hundreds of hours of music and conducted hundreds more in the studio from both my scores and others’‚ I have a pretty good idea of what needs to be on the page and what can be dispensed with. I have done experiments where I take the same section of music and write it a few ways to see what happens. By leaving some sections with minimal dynamics and articulation marked, I have worked out the default performance style.
What you will find is that the orchestra does not need to be programmed like a computer, where you must fill in every line of code or it will stop. It is a living organism that thinks for itself and is capable of filling in many details, in ways we could never even notate. The programming, in other words, has already been done. The best part about this is that it means the orchestra is very predictable. The art lies in knowing how to trigger and exploit these predictable behaviors to get the musical results you want.