How to Prepare for Rehearsals

by Oliver Pashley 

The most obvious thing to take care of before a rehearsal
is learning your notes © ClassyAF/Facebook

As a classical musician, we are often faced (in more normal times, at least) with the dilemma of having too many notes to learn and not enough time to learn them in. Concerts and opportunities come in at the last minute, sometimes leaving us barely enough time to practice the music before being thrust out onto a stage, gawping out into the cavernous arena as a hungry audience bays for entertainment. Ok, maybe that’s my performance anxiety talking, but before I get too overdramatic and mix my metaphors of musicians and gladiators any further, it is true that people have asked me in the past how we prepare for rehearsals, especially at short notice. How do we get ready for rehearsals? How do we choose what to practise and prioritise? And, perhaps more importantly, what gets left to chance in the rehearsal room?

The most simple, and perhaps obvious thing to take care of before a rehearsal is learning your notes. Nothing is worse than waiting for someone to get to grips with something they could have learned in their own time, and in a professional setting, it’s a sure-fire way to never get asked back again. Of course, there may be genuinely difficult things that, despite practice, still take putting together in the rehearsal room – no one is saying you have to be 100% perfect all the time or it’s curtains – but there’s a difference between spending rehearsal time working out a legitimate problem and wasting rehearsal time because you didn’t look at your music beforehand.

© Manchester Summer Chamber Music

With this said, there might be instances where you just don’t have enough time to get everything under your fingers. If you get called up at the last minute to play in a concert you might not have time to play everything by yourself beforehand – but maybe the vast majority of what you have to play is sight-readable (unless you’re doing a last-minute concerto, but that’s a whole other story). And if there’s a tricky excerpt or something nasty that appears, then our training will have prepared us for this: it’s commonplace at conservatoires for students to learn the most infamous passages in the orchestral repertoire, not just to hone their technique, but on the off chance they’ll actually have to perform them in the future. The more work that’s done as a student, the greater the memory bank to fall back on later down the road.

While preparation is important, this shouldn’t be confused with needing to necessarily play every single note before the rehearsal starts. Part of the skill of working as a musician is being able to look at a part and laser out the bar or two that needs a bit of work while leaving the rest to the rehearsal. It might be that two bars of semiquavers stand out amongst a sea of semibreves, and so this is where the priority needs to be focused, especially for things like recording sessions, where the music may have been printed only minutes before the red light illuminates.

© reverb.com

This might sound scary, but this is where the training kicks in. Things that might take an amateur ensemble time to get to grips with – tuning, balance, ensemble, and so on – are all taken as read before any of us even open our cases in the rehearsal room. We’re responsible for learning our notes, of course, but we’re also responsible for being responsive and adaptive, for learning to adjust on the fly – and this is something that you can’t prepare for alone.

Through our years of training, of performing in youth orchestras, taking part in masterclasses, doing courses, receiving lessons, attending concerts: these are when all the skills are learned and honed. In music college, there are certainly still things to learn, but there is also a focus on opening up, on being receptive to what’s going on around you: in simple terms, of listening.

Our personal practice only takes us so far. We can arrive with the notes under our fingers but unless we listen and respond in the moment, the music won’t go anywhere. If you show up reasonably prepared and with your ears open, you’ll avoid being thrown to the lions and live to see another day. Sorry, couldn’t resist.

Franz Liszt: Dante Symphony Premiered on 7 November 1857

by Georg Predota

Franz Liszt, 1858

Enjoying the shores of Lake Como with Marie d’Agoult in 1837, Franz Liszt (1811-1886) immersed himself in a close reading of Dante’s Divine Comedy. The idea of composing a symphony to Dante’s Divine Comedy, one that would combine music, poetry and the visual arts, gradually took shape. Initially, Liszt suggested that the performance might be accompanied by the projection of lanternslides, showing scenes painted by Bonaventura Genelli. Apparently, he even considered “the use of an experimental wind machine at the end of the first movement to evoke the winds of Hell.”

Dante and His Poem by Domenico di Michelino

In the event, in June 1855, Liszt wrote to his future son-in-law Richard Wagner. “So you are reading Dante. He’s good company for you, and I for my part want to provide you with a kind of commentary on that reading. I have long been carrying a Dante Symphony around in my head – this year I intend to finish it. Three movements, Hell, Purgatory and Paradise – the first two for orchestra alone, the last with chorus. When I visit you in the autumn I shall probably be able to bring it with me; and if you don’t dislike it you can let me inscribe your name on it.” Wagner was enthusiastic, but advised against including a choral finale on the grounds that “Paradise could not be depicted in music.”

Royal Theatre in Dresden

On the advice of Wagner, Liszt discarded the idea of a choral finale and added a brief setting for women’s voices of the first two verses of the “Magnificat,” all ending with a “Hallelujah.” When Liszt played the Dante symphony for Wagner in Zürich in October 1856, Wagner greatly disliked the fortissimo conclusion. He wrote in his autobiography, “If anything had convinced me of the man’s masterly and poetical powers of conception, it was the original ending of the Faust Symphony, in which the delicate fragrance of a last reminiscence of Gretchen overpowers everything, without arresting the attention by a violent disturbance. The ending of the Dante Symphony seemed to me to be quite on the same lines, for the delicately introduced “Magnificat” in the same way only gives a hint of a soft, shimmering Paradise. I was the more startled to hear this beautiful suggestion suddenly interrupted in an alarming way by a pompous, plagal cadence. No! I exclaimed loudly, not that, away with it! No majestic Deity! Leave us the fine soft shimmer!” Liszt kept both endings; the loud one is indicated in his version for two pianos, but in the orchestral score it is usually omitted. The Dante Symphony is dedicated to Richard Wagner, and the first performance took place at the Royal Theatre in Dresden on 7 November 1857. Liszt conducted, and Hans von Bülow—still married to Liszt’s daughter Cosima—wrote, “the occasion proved a fiasco.” The press was hostile and Liszt wrote that the performance was “very unsuccessful from lack of rehearsal.”

Sandro Botticelli: Chart of Hell

A published preface functioning as a program guided audiences through the composition, but the music continued to challenge audiences for decades to come. George Bernard Shaw reviewed the work in 1885 and wrote, “the manner in which the program was presented by Liszt could just as well represent a London house when the kitchen chimney is on fire.” In terms of musical narrative, the opening movement is entitled “Inferno” and guides us through the nine Circles of Hell. The “Gates of Hell” sing slow recitative-like themes, and at “The Vestibule and First Circle Hell” the music becomes frantic. When Dante and Virgil enter the “Second Circle of Hell,” the infernal “Black Wind” that perpetually shakes the damned greets them. Here we find the tragic love of Francesca, whose adulterous affair with her brother-in-law Paolo cost her life and soul. The “Black Wind” motif returns in the “Seventh Circle of Hell,” and Liszt writes, “this entire passage is intended to be a blasphemous mocking laughter.” The “Eight” and “Ninth Circles of Hell” present slightly varied themes, and Dante and Virgil gradually emerge from Hell. They ascend Mount Purgatorio in the second, initially solemn and tranquil movement. Dante and Virgil ascend the two terraces of Ante-Purgatory, where souls repent their sins. The “Seven Cornices of Mount Purgatory” represent the seven deadly sins, and “Earthly Paradise” guides the soul to Paradise. In the score, Liszt directs that the choir be hidden from the audience in the concluding “Magnificat.” Liszt wrote, “Art cannot portray heaven itself, only its image in the hearts of those souls, which have turned to the light of heavenly grace. Thus for us the radiance is still shrouded, although it increases with the clarity of understanding.”

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

by Georg Predota  

Beyond the Tormented Genius

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky at 23

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840–1893) stands as one of the most enigmatic and beloved figures in the Romantic era, a composer whose music pulses with raw emotion, sweeping melodies, and an unerring sense of drama. Born into the vast, turbulent landscape of imperial Russia, Tchaikovsky bridged the worlds of Western classical tradition and Slavic folk expression, creating works that resonate universally while deeply rooted in his personal struggles.

Recent scholarship has demythologised the composer’s image, moving beyond the mid-20th-century trope of a tortured homosexual soul to reveal a multifaceted artist. According to Simon Morrison, he was not “a tortured gay man but a fun-loving individual with a Monty Python sense of humour.”

His death on 6 November 1893 silenced a voice at its peak, yet his legacy endures in repertoires worldwide. “His art,” according to Morrison, “emerges as an abiding retort to the Romanticism of his time, directly expressive and self-controlled.” To commemorate his passing, let’s feature a composer who “changed the parameters of Russian music.”  

From Ural Cradle to Conservatory Call

The young Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky in 1863

Tchaikovsky’s early life was marked by privilege and precocity, set against the backdrop of Russia’s cultural awakening. Born on 7 May 1840, in Votkinsk, a remote Ural mining town, to a middle-class family, he displayed musical talent from infancy.

A French governess introduced him to opera, and by age four, he improvised on the piano. Tragedy, however, struck early as his mother died from cholera in 1854. This left a scar that fuelled lifelong health anxieties.

Sent to St. Petersburg’s School of Jurisprudence, Tchaikovsky endured a regimented education, emerging in 1859 as a minor civil servant. Yet music called insistently. In 1862, at the age of 22, he enrolled in the newly founded St. Petersburg Conservatory under Anton Rubinstein, Russia’s pioneering musical educator.  

The Hybrid Master

Scholarly accounts emphasise how this formal training shaped Tchaikovsky’s cosmopolitanism. Unlike the nationalist “Mighty Handful” consisting of Balakirev, Cui, Mussorgsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, and Borodin, who scorned conservatory “Westernism,” Tchaikovsky embraced it, blending Mozartian clarity with Russian soulfulness.

As Alexander Poznansky details in his publications on Tchaikovsky, the composer’s correspondence reveals a young man “eager to absorb European techniques while infusing them with Slavic passion.”

By 1866, he had joined Moscow’s Conservatory as a professor of harmony, a post that sustained him amid financial woes. This period birthed Tchaikovsky’s first masterpieces, where personal turmoil fuelled artistic fire. His Symphony No. 1 in G minor, “Winter Dreams” of 1868, evokes Russia’s frozen vastness with lyrical second themes that hint at the melancholy introspection defining his style.   

Love Themes and Letter Scenes

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky in 1893

But it was the Romeo and Juliet Fantasy Overture, scored in 1869 and revised in 1880 that catapulted him to fame. Inspired by Shakespeare’s tragedy and prompted by Balakirev, the work’s soaring love theme played by solo oboe and strings captures star-crossed passion in a mere 20 minutes.

Musicologist David Brown praises its “emotional directness,” noting how the friar’s chorale motif underscores fate’s inexorability. The musical highlight is the climatic love theme, swelling with harp arpeggios and horn calls. It is a sonic embrace that represents “a microcosm of Tchaikovsky’s heart-on-sleeve Romanticism.”

The 1870’s brought professional ascent and personal crisis. Tchaikovsky’s opera Eugene Onegin premiered modestly but endures as a staple. Its “Letter Scene,” where Tatiana pours out unrequited love in a soaring aria, exemplifies his gift for vocal lyricism. As scholars observe, “Tchaikovsky’s operas… throw considerable light on his creative personality, blending irony and pathos to mirror the composer’s own romantic disillusionments.”   

Breakdown to Breakthrough

Tchaikovsky with his wife Antonina Milykova

A disastrous marriage to student Antonina Milykova in 1877, lasting six weeks, triggered a nervous breakdown. Fleeing to Italy and Switzerland, Tchaikovsky poured anguish into his Fourth Symphony in F minor. This symphony, dedicated to his secret patron Nadezhda von Meck, is a cornerstone of his oeuvre.

Von Meck, a wealthy widow, provided 6,000 rubles annually from 1877–1890, freeing him to compose without teaching. Their 1,200-letter correspondence, platonic and profound exchange deeply personal thoughts on music, life, and philosophy, though they never met in person.

The Fourth’s famed “fate motif” in the blaring horns in the opening recurs like a harbinger, symbolising life’s intrusion on happiness. Recent analysis locates a work “poised between East and West,” with Russian folk inflections in the scherzo’s pizzicato strings evoking sleigh bells.”   

Ballet Revolution

Nadezhda von Meck

Ballets, often dismissed as “light” in Tchaikovsky’s canon, showcase his theatrical genius and rank among his most enduring highlights. Swan Lake of 1877, commissioned by Moscow’s Imperial Theatre, weaves a fairy-tale curse into orchestral splendour. Premiering to mixed reviews, its revised 1895 version triumphed. The “Swan Theme” has been interpreted as “a barometer of the aesthetic and political climates,” mirroring Tchaikovsky’s hidden self.

The Sleeping Beauty of 1890, scored for Paris’ Mariinsky Theatre, revels in opulent waltzes. Tchaikovsky took pride here, calling it “brilliant and organic.” The “Rose Adage” lilting horns and harp glissandi evoke courtly romance, a musical highlight of crystalline orchestration.

The Nutcracker of 1892 completes the triumvirate, although it flopped at the premiere.

A Christmas fantasia drawn from E.T.A. Hoffmann, it brims with invention. Gerald Abraham, “deems it characterful… with structural fluency.” Here, Tchaikovsky elevated dance music “into the ranks of the highest respected classical forms.”   

Thunderous Keys and Dying Embers

Yosif Kotek and Tchaikovsky

Concertos reveal Tchaikovsky’s virtuosic flair. The Piano Concerto No. 1 in B-flat minor opens with iconic horn fanfares over piano thunder, a gesture initially rejected as “too showy.” Its martial first movement yields to a radiant second-theme melody, passed from piano to orchestra like a lovers’ duet. Its sweeping melodies and dramatic contrasts make it a staple for pianists.

The Violin Concerto, dedicated to pupil Yosif Kotek amid post-marriage exile, faced Auer’s initial scorn but premiered triumphantly in 1881. Its second movement’s “Canzonetta” is a tearful jewel, and the finale a Cossack romp. Auer later remarked, “its emotional depth stems from Tchaikovsky’s inner conflicts.”

Later symphonies plumb existential depths. The Fifth in E minor cycles a fate motto from brooding lament to victorious hymn. The Symphony No. 6, “Pathétique,” premiered days before his death, unfolds in tragic arcs. The first movement presents an anguished march, the third a despairing waltz, and the finale glows with dying embers. Tchaikovsky dedicated it to his nephew Bob Davydov, amid rumours of romantic attachment. Poznansky argues it reflects “no unbearable guilt” over sexuality, but a “natural part of his personality.”   

Crucible of Soul

Tchaikovsky’s life and art, forged in the crucible of personal anguish and boundless imagination, transcended the rigid divide between Russian soul and Western craft. From the frost-kissed reveries of Winter Dreams to the heart-rending adagio of the Pathétique, his music remains an unflinching mirror to the human condition, expressive yet disciplined, intimate yet universal.

Where the “Mighty Handful” sought to banish Western influence in favour of raw folk idioms, Tchaikovsky absorbed Mozart’s architecture and Beethoven’s pathos, then refracted them through the prism of Slavic melancholy and Orthodox chant. The result was a language at once cosmopolitan and confessional.

Beneath the music lay a man who defied caricature. The old portrait of a suicidal homosexual, codified by Soviet censorship and Western pathos, has crumbled under scrutiny. Poznansky’s archival excavations reveal a correspondent who joked about bad reviews, teased von Meck about her hypochondria, and signed letters with playful diminutives. Apparently, Tchaikovsky once sent a mock-funeral march to a friend who overslept, complete with trombone glissandi.   

Russian Soul and World Stage

This lightness coexisted with profound vulnerability, including health terrors, a six-week marriage that nearly unmade him, and the unspoken contract with von Meck that barred them from ever meeting.

Yet from these fractures emerged a creative discipline almost ascetic in its rigour. He revised Romeo and Juliet thrice, shaved excess from the Pathétique until its despair felt inevitable, and orchestrated The Sleeping Beauty with a jeweller’s precision.

Tchaikovsky did not merely change Russian music, but he globalised the Russian heart, proving that the most personal confession, when wedded to universal craft, becomes the common property of humankind.