Don’t they practice? is the conductor really necessary?
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By the time you are performing orchestral or wind ensemble music for an audience, you’re actually not looking at your music as closely as you were when you first started learning the piece. It’s there as a guidepost by that point, not to be read very closely note by note. That said, there are a lot of factors on the page, including especially additional handwritten notes conveying instructions from your conductor (let’s take out this repeat! Actually that’s a misprint, it should be D flat! Only one on a part here! Let’s take a rit. in this bar!), and they make helpful reminders.
That said, some of it also comes down to convention. In classical music performers often do straight up memorize their parts, even for very long pieces. Marching bands play whole sets from memory; opera and musical theater singers perform from memory; soloists (voice, string, wind, percussion — anyone standing in front of the ensemble) often perform from memory. I once performed in a classical chorus that made everyone sing a full Requiem from memory, though I can’t say I enjoyed that.
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