Mahler's 5TH Symphony

[Eduardo Barbosa]

Thank you very much for taking the time to help me.
I greatly appreciated it. Those are very good suggestions.
One more quick question.
I seem to do OK following the other bass players. My Orchestra has 5 basses including myself.
This particular piece is very hard, and it has many markings for dynamics, accents, diminuendo,crescendo, sforzando, etc. When looking at the begging of the Scherzo I can see myself spending a lot of time just with the first few bowed measures.
My question is:
Should I spend a lot of time in small spots until I get them right, or should I become familiar with the whole piece and then come back to clean up the difficult passages?
Thank you.