One method (probably the easiest and fastest), is to export the file as MIDI from Dorico as well, (Set the Humanization in Dorico’s Playback Options to 0% first) and import that into Cubase on fresh tracks along side your XML import. Dorico will export the type of MIDI translation for what ever expression map you have loaded at the time.
Once you import this MIDI file into Cubase, you could either treat playback and visual tracks independently (mute the score tracks from playback), or you could then extract ‘just the CC events’ in Cubase from the MIDI tracks, and move that onto your Score Tracks (or onto VST lanes). For the Velocities, you could then use Cubase MIDI Logic Editors (simple booleen scripts you can make inside Cubase) to replace the note-on velocities of your XML score tracks with the note-on values of the MIDI tracks in one or two quick passes.
Also, you can use the MIDI Logic Editor in Cubase to fairly quickly build some natural sounding dynamics in Cubase from scratch.
So another pretty quick method, if it’s an instrument that uses CC1 or CC11 to control dynamics, is to simply ‘insert’ at the same position as the note, a CC event that’s the same as the MIDI Note Value using a batch “MIDI Logic Editor in Cubase”. At this point phrases will get louder as notes go higher, and softer as they get lower. If the instrument uses velocity instead of CC1 or CC11, the same logic applies, but instead of ‘inserting’ CC events, you’d ‘change’ the note velocity to be equal to the note-on value.
From here, you could set ‘ranges’ in subsequent Logic Editor passes to ‘scale’ things up/down (either by percentages or fixed amounts) for balance, and getting your ‘terraced dynamics’, OR, you could opt to enter some expression map entries that will interpret and scale your terraced dynamics using Master Volume (CC7). As for hairpin dynamics, you’ll simply have to draw them in on CC lanes, or ‘replace them’ with interpretive hair-pins entered in Cubase’s own Score Editor. It’s also possible to just select ranges of CC events on a lane in the key editor using your MIDI Logic editor, and then simply ‘grab and drag’ them en mass to scale them about.
Sadly, unless things have changed in Cubase 9, Cubase doesn’t interpret ‘imported’ terraced dynamics, nor hairpins from XML. You either have to go through the whole score and ‘replace them’ with equivalent marks from Cubase’s own scoring tools (The MIDI Logic Editor doesn’t let us mess with notation VSTevents in mass batch-style like we can with regular MIDI-like events either), or create some extra expression map entries that are ‘text based’. That’ll at least get terraced dynamics if you simply search for things like p, mf, f, etc, and change the master volume (CC7)…but it won’t cover hairpins, or things like sfz changes over time. You’d probably also need to create extra entries in your expressioh maps in Cubase to get things like accents, tenuto, and alter existing ones a bit to get the ‘technique changes’.
Some threads of the topic of MIDI Logic Editors in Cubase:
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