The score I used is the Kalmus edition which comes in 2 parts. It's quite pricey!
I played all the parts in using my Roland XP-30 keyboard starting from the Basses and working up the score to the flute/piccolo parts. Volume (crescendos, diminuendos, etc.) is controlled by Modulation (CC1) which I have programmed to a fader on the XP-30. Legato mode is triggered by sustain pedal. All editing is performed in the PRV. The piece used the original version of GPO in Kontakt which was upgraded in the middle of the recordings to the Kontakt 2 version. I had to slow down some parts such as the harp. I played all harp glisses in by hand which is really time consuming.
I submix each section (Strings, Percussion, Brass, Woodwinds) to make it easier to balance the sections. I use different amounts of reverb on each section. Strings have less reverb as the sit by the front of the stage. More reverb on woodwinds and brass. The percussion usually has the most. The reverb is the Lexicon Pantheon reverb included with Sonar which was matched to a recording of a real orchestra.
Tempo changes are the most time consuming part and can take half as long as recording the parts! I usually import an audio recording of a live orchestra playing it and work the tempo changes against it. Most orchestras don't play more than one bar at the same tempo. I shut off the grid and use the line drawing tool. Some measures have constant tempo changes going on especially for rubato playing. The tempo maps for each piece have thousands of events. One of the toughest time signatures is 3/4 time. There is a constant push/pull going on. The tempo maps had to be redone for the LA Ballet as they were practicing with a different recording. So I ended doing a big chunk of these for the live performances. We had a couple other people doing the rest because of time restraints. The Russian Dance was slowed down quite a bit because the Russian Dancer was jumping so high that he needed more time. This guy was amazing.
Live performance was quite tricky. The whole orchestra was wearing headphones so they could hear the click track and the recorded parts. The conductor was used to working with click tracks as she has conducted quite a few movie scoring sessions. Most of the musicians in the orchestra were top LA studio musicians. This really helped with working with a click. These are the people who can sightread this kind of music and play it perfectly the first time! There were only a few hiccups during the shows which was amazing when you think about the amount of tempo changes. One was with the beginning of the Pas De Deux which starts with 2 harps playing. We only had one live harp and the other one was recorded. The live harpist started just a tad late the one show and it took a few measures to fall back into sync.
BTW, this recorded way before GPO4 was out! Many of the recordings go back to right after GPO was first released. The PC used was a Pentium 4 with 2 GB of RAM.
I've been a Cakewalk user since Version 1.0 for Windows and have continued to use the Cakewalks products over the years. So that's why I still use Sonar.
Jim