Screen actors playing musicians: the best and worst examples

Actors ‘playing’ instruments on screen can be the stuff of nightmares. But, asks Michael Beek, to what lengths have they gone to make it look convincing?

James Stewart learned the trombone for his role in The Glenn Miller Story © Getty

Michael Beek

Published: November 10, 2025 at 6:00 pm

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In Humoresque (1946), John Garfield plays a virtuoso violinist. By then, Garfield was an Oscar-nominated actor, but he was no violinist. That said, his ‘performances’ are pretty convincing. Why? Because at least one of his arms is actually that of the great Isaac Stern. Similarly, in Deception (1946), a film released a few months prior, Paul Henreid plays a leading cellist. His performances were achieved thanks to the arms of a pair of professional cellists, accommodated by Henreid’s oversized jacket. Cosy...    

John Garfield 'plays' the violin - with the help of Isaac Stern – in Humoresque

Actors playing musicians: can you spot a fake?

Smoke and mirrors can only do so much, though, and not all filmmakers go to such creative lengths. So, is it fair to say you can spot a fake musician a mile off? Julian Lloyd Webber certainly thinks so. ‘When you see them, they’re pretty much always terrible,’ says the British cellist; ‘it’s rare that you see them and think they’ve actually got it right. I mean Deception does, because they’ve got people who are professionals doing that job. I think it’s not possible for someone who doesn’t play at all to make a convincing job of it – I don’t see how they can. Shine was pretty good… the fact he played the piano himself just says it all.’

• The 12 best uses of classical music in film

He is of course referring to Scott Hicks’s 1996 film, in which Geoffrey Rush gave an Oscar-winning performance as Australian pianist David Helfgott. Rush played as a youngster and happily returned to the keyboard to put in the hours to take on the role; indeed, he performs on screen himself, even in close-up. The actors playing the younger Helfgott in flashbacks, Alex Rafalowicz and Noah Taylor, were hand-doubled in close-up by pianists Simon Tedeschi and Martin Cousin. It’s a well-tested means of capturing a more realistic performance.    

Geoffrey Rush, as pianist David Helfgott, in the film Shine

Tricks of the camera: the hand double

Unlike Geoffrey Rush, and despite months of tuition and practice, actor Adrian Brody used a hand double for his role as Wladysław Szpilman in Roman Polanski’s The Pianist (2002). Janusz Olejniczak did the honours for the performance, which otherwise won Brody an Oscar.

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Someone with experience of hand doubling is French pianist Alexandre Tharaud, whose fingers recently appeared in Anne Fontaine’s Boléro, about Maurice Ravel – he also plays music critic Pierre Lalo in the film. Actor Raphaël Personnaz portrays Ravel and while he undertook piano lessons for the role, it is Tharaud doing a lot of the work, as he explains. ‘When you see the hands with his face it’s him, but when you see only the hands it’s my hands. Sometimes you see his hands, then my hands, then his hands, and we have totally different hands! But nobody thought that was a problem...’

Tharaud shared a costume with Personnaz in order to match the sleeves on camera, pre-recorded the tracks for them both to play to on set, shot scenes at Ravel’s Parisian house and even played Ravel’s piano. He admits it was a surreal experience. ‘I wore the same suit and robe as Raphaël, so it was a little bit sweaty. I played to the playback of what I recorded three weeks before, on the same model of piano – when I recorded it, I tried to play with mistakes, because Ravel wasn’t a good pianist. So, I was dressed as Ravel, at his piano playing to my own recording, which was trying to imitate him! It was a very deep connection and it’s difficult to explain what I felt.’   

Non-essential music making on screen

In these cases, the need for an actor to take to the keyboard or pick up a bow is unavoidable, music being at the heart of the story. But sometimes film or TV characters just happen to be written as musicians. Tim Burton’s Netflix series Wednesday sees the titular Wednesday Addams, iconic from decades-old comic strips, movies and TV series, recast as a cellist. For the producers it was a means of allowing the character (a closed book, emotionally) to open up, the cello an outlet for her feelings.

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That’s all well and good, but for Jenna Ortega (who plays her) it meant not only breathing life into Addams but getting to grips with the cello. I show Julian Lloyd Webber a clip and ask what he thinks of her technique. ‘I was impressed by the fact that she’d bothered to actually learn the cello a little bit,’ he replies. ‘Although it’s obvious she’s not playing that complicated piece, at least you know she’s had a go.’

Jenna Ortega 'has a go' at playing the cello in Wednesday

Actors learning instruments for a role... how good can they get?

Plenty of actors have ‘had a go’ with varying levels of success. James Stewart learned the trombone for The Glenn Miller Story (1954) and apparently had every intention of being heard in the film. Alas, the sound he made was so bad he mimed to recordings of his coach, Joe Yukl. Ryan Gosling learned at the keyboard for months before playing a fictional jazz pianist in La La Land (2016), while Emily Watson carried a cello around with her for a lengthy period ahead of portraying Jacqueline du Pré in Anand Tucker’s Hilary and Jackie (1998). Watson was coached by cellist Caroline Dale, who performed most of what we hear in the film, and Watson received an Oscar nomination for her portrayal.   

It’s not a film Lloyd Webber is keen to champion, however, having known the real du Pré. ‘I think Emily Watson was very good, but it was a sort of hatchet job, really, and I’m very against the film. There were so many bad things in it; the worst, and the one that you know just would never happen, was when you see her leave her Stradivari out overnight in the snow in Russia. That is just stupid.’

The trailer for Hilary and Jackie, featuring Emily Watson as Jacqueline du Pré

Is it more difficult to pretend to play a violin than a piano?

Weather-related offences aside, I ask Lloyd Webber if it is perhaps more difficult to pretend to play a stringed instrument over, say, the piano, which an actor can hide behind to a certain degree. ‘I think it probably is more difficult,’ he says, ‘because if you need to do a full front shot – which would have been the case in something like Hilary and Jackie – you know it’s got to be right. And it seldom is!’

Alexandre Tharaud rightly points out that there is more to playing the piano than we might think, though. ‘On a piano it’s not just the fingers; it’s a chain of muscles. We play with the whole body, the legs, the feet; the position is your relationship with the stage. So, if an actor tries to play piano, they will play with the fingers, and they are too focused on the keyboard.’   

It’s a huge amount for an actor to take on, then, whatever the instrument, and while the likes of Julian Lloyd Webber might prefer that actors simply leave it to the professionals, some actors have gone the extra mile in order to pass muster.

Actors playing musicians... success stories

In A Late Quartet (2012), the late Philip Seymour Hoffman played the second violinist of a fictional New York string quartet (the Fugue Quartet). He threw himself into learning the instrument months before shooting began and was coached by violinist Nanae Iwata. The pair had weekly lessons, and Hoffman immersed himself in the violin. And it wasn’t just hold and technique; he wanted to understand every facet of how to live and work with the instrument and his quartet mates, as Iwata shares.

‘He asked how he would shift in his seat, or how he would talk to the others; eyelines etc. I don’t even think about those things, so I was then paying attention to them in order to help him. Even things like how you would hold the case, how you would open it and chit-chat while getting the instrument ready. He really wanted to feel comfortable doing that, so he practised at home. He told me, “I practised for 20 minutes straight, just opening the case and putting it back while I was talking to someone, and it was really difficult!” He wanted to look legit, and he really worked hard on it.’     

The trailer for A Late Quartet, featuring Philip Seymour Hoffman as a violinist

Iwata was on set, too, when Hoffman had to ‘play’ – his movement, body language, fingering and bowing were all carefully choreographed to the music: Beethoven’s Op. 131 String Quartet. This was after hours of time together, Hoffman sometimes videoing Iwata or practising fingering and vibrato to make it look like he was a seasoned player. She was impressed by his commitment. ‘He wanted to feel like it was really coming from within him,’ she remembers, ‘and I really respected that.’

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Fooling the viewer... Camera tricks and CGI

Like Hoffman, fellow actors Mark Ivanir (violin) and Catherine Keener (viola) did all their own ‘playing’ on camera, with Christopher Walken (cello) the only one to use a hand double for close ups. Much like Paul Henreid in 1946’s Deception, Walken’s left hand was that of cellist David Bakamjian, who snuggled into the actor’s back wearing matching shirtsleeves to blend in.   

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Today, digital effects are another way that filmmakers can attempt to maintain the crucial musicality of a real player. For her 2019 film Blanche comme neige, director Anne Fontaine simply replaced a real viola da gamba player’s head with an actor’s. It’s an expensive option, but one Alexandre Tharaud tells me they discussed using in Fontaine’s Boléro. ‘We were told we had to choose; if we did that, the money would have to be taken from somewhere else in the budget. I would have been Ravel, but only up to my neck!’   

Pasting an actor’s head onto a musician’s body might solve part of the puzzle when depicting realistic music-making on screen, but would we buy it even then? When we’re expected to believe that the person we’re watching is not just playing the music, but hearing it and feeling it as well, something will surely always be lost in translation.    

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.

Music to help us through difficult times

Multiple studies show that music can do wonders for our mental health. So which pieces do we turn to when times are tough?

David soothes King Saul’s troubled mind with his lyre © Getty

Published: November 3, 2025 at 6:00 pm

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Music cannot work a magic spell. It can, however, do wonderful things. In recent issues of BBC Music Magazine, we have explored the benefits to mental health of listening and playing music, not least when it comes to alleviating depression, though in fact this is a subject that has been addressed literally centuries ago – Greek philosophers Plato and Aristotle both discuss it, and the Old Testament (1 Samuel 16: 14-23) tells of how David’s skills on the lyre would ease King Saul’s troubled mind.

• Music and mental health: what scientists have revealed about the connections between them

So, taking the science and anecdotal evidence as read, let’s turn to the here and now. What pieces do people turn to during difficult times, when spirits are low? For some, the way out of the abyss may lie in something light and upbeat, for some it might be something soothingly placid, while others turn to something empathetically sorrowful. Here, four BBC Music writers, plus the magazine’s own editorial staff, share their choices of works to alleviate the gloomiest of times.

Read on to discover the music that helps us through difficult times...

Vaughan Williams: Symphony No. 5 – Romanza

Sir Antonio Pappano conducts the Romanza from Vaughan Williams's Symphony No. 5 with the London Symphony Orchestra in 2024

It may sound counterintuitive, but when going through difficult times I have always found that listening to slow, meditative, even melancholy music helps me to work through that negative emotion rather than attempting to mask it with lighter, brighter fare. If ever I’m in need of a good, cleansing cry, listening to John Williams’s score for ET will absolutely do the trick – just a few bars are enough to bring tears to my eyes.    

But for something deeper – even spiritual – I turn to Vaughan Williams’s Fifth Symphony and the third movement Romanza, which not only conveys a poignant feeling of nostalgia, but an uplifting sense of beauty. It’s that modal tension between major and minor – or, in other words, between sadness and joy – that allows me to experience unhappiness and loss, couched in an elegant structure. The essence of catharsis.   

For the ultimate recording, I turn to Bernard Haitink conducting the London Philharmonic Orchestra (EMI Classics, 1995). Haitink doesn’t allow himself to wallow in emotion, his tempos perfectly poised – so that VW’s homage to a world gone forever never descends into schmaltz. 

Charlotte Smith

Mahler: Rückert-Lieder  – ‘Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen’

Claudio Abbado conducts the Lucerne Festival Orchestra in – ‘Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen’ featuring mezzo Magdalena Kožena

A death foretold enables grief to secure a head start. How to navigate it? Nothing quite equals music in teaching us how to reconcile with impending loss. The Requiem aeternam from Duruflé’s Requiem, Fauré’s seraphic setting of the In Paradisum and the obligato-oboe-enriched opening aria of Bach’s Cantata BWV170, ‘Vergnügte Ruh’, all invited spiritual solace; but in the event, secularism won out as Mahler, enshrined in the symbiotic sublimity of mezzo Janet Baker and conductor John Barbirolli, plus the poetry of Rückert at its most simply distilled, became an inescapable, endless, go-to.    ‘Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen’ (I am lost to the world) from the Rückert-Lieder is a heartfelt leave-taking swaddled in tenderness and reassurance. Orchestrally enlarged, beseeching cor anglais and anchoring harp already tremble on the edge of eternity before Baker floats the vocal line with a radiant serenity that intensifies with every passing bar. The final lines, as Rückert rests at last ‘in my heaven, in my love, in my song’, are achingly poignant – the perfect musical incarnation (without the ambiguity) of Philip Larkin’s conclusion to his poem ‘An Arundel Tomb’: ‘what will survive of us is love’. Forty years on, goodnight mum! 

Paul Riley

JS Bach: Violin Partita No.2 – Chaconne  

Viktoria Mullova performs the Chaconne from Bach’s Violin Partita No. 2

I don’t remember the first time I heard the Bach Chaconne, but I do remember how it made me feel. The monumental fifth movement from the Violin Partita No. 2 – its duration surpassing the previous four movements combined – demands complete surrender from its listener. 

Its tortured opening chords hurl you into a world of exquisite pain, and through its meticulous structure – a series of variations of varying harmonic and melodic complexity – it becomes one long cry of anguish. The Chaconne, particularly in Jascha Heifetz’s 1971 recording, feels like it encompasses every pain in the world. Some believe that Bach composed it in mourning his wife, but whether that’s true or not, for me it has always signalled a sense of shared universal tragedy; it tears you open so you can start to heal.    

• In the midst of the piece’s outcry, D minor becomes D major, and, in that moment, you can breathe. That temporary respite offers a hope that even in heartbreak, everything might be okay. The Chaconne has always prompted in me a process of release; its passages encompass the confusion and desperation of grief yet somehow offer a sublime solace and freedom in embracing it. Violinist Joshua Bell described it, beautifully, as ‘one of the greatest achievements by any man in history… a spiritually powerful piece, emotionally powerful, structurally perfect’.

Miranda Bardsley

L Boulanger: Psalm 130, ‘Du fond de l’abîme’

The Radio Philharmonic Orchestra and 'Het Groot Omroepkoor' perform Lili Boulanger’s Psalm 130, 'Du fond de l'abîme' conducted by James Gaffigan

‘Never give up hope!’ says today’s received wisdom. But what if hope is the thing that keeps you stuck: by clinging desperately to the impossible, you rule out living the possible? That’s what struck me forcefully when listening to Lili Boulanger’s magnificent but disturbing choral-orchestral setting of Psalm 130, ‘Du fond de l’abîme’ – ‘From out of the depths’. 

Stunningly gifted, lauded on all sides, Boulanger wrote it as she faced painful death at the age of just 24. There are moments of hope, but the French word ‘espère’ goes on a journey in which all radiance, all comfort is slowly wrung out of it. If the music weren’t so exquisitely beautiful, it would be unbearable.    

What it did for Boulanger herself I can only guess, but for me, one wintry afternoon 15 years ago, it made me realise that my deeply troubled and troubling mother could never be the mother I’d always hoped she could be, and that for my sake – and perhaps also for hers – that hope had to die. As mezzo Ann Murray took up the desolate solo at the heart of ‘Du fond de l’abîme’, I thought I’d never stop sobbing. But it was a release, and if I’m now better able to face the world as it is, I owe that at least partly to Lili Boulanger.

Stephen Johnson

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Recomposed by Max Richter: Vivaldi – The Four Seasons

Max Richter and Daniel Hope perform ‘Spring’ from Richater/Vivaldi’s Four Seasons Recomposed

I did not know – nor care – what had happened to the sleeve. It was surplus to requirements: the record on the turntable had not been changed for some weeks. The process of choosing, and listening, to a physical album had become a treasured evening ritual, but at this point in my life, back in 2012, newness was unbearable. The risk of disappointment or displeasure was too great – in fact, any emotional response needed to be carefully managed. Music had to be upbeat (but not jolly, saccharine or too energising) and easy to listen to (but not easy listening), simultaneously raising a depressive mood and neutralising a higher one. The same went for books, films, food, conversations: selection had become an exhausting and dangerous chore.    

Now, the familiar yellow centre spun on the record player, in the same way it had for many nights. Strings blurred with electric crackles; a well-worn violin melody etched its way into life. Max Richter’s reimagining of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons somehow fitted my nonsensical cultural brief, comforting in its familiarity yet with enough invention to maintain interest. It’s not a work that will induce tears, terror or toil, and that, in this context, was its strength. It remains in my collection – reunited with its case.

Claire Jackson

Rubbra: Symphony No. 5

BBC National Orchestra of Wales conducted by Richard Hickox performs Rubbra’s Symphony No. 5

In the later years of her life, deliberately though now unhappily single, my mother leaned on me heavily – for solace, for company, for daily communication. I found myself wrestling with a lot of different feelings, including guilt and sadness on her behalf, but also exasperation at her daily demands on my time and energy. I also found my emotional resources constantly depleted in the quest to reassure her that she’d be OK – that I was here. 

During this period, I sought out music of peace and contemplation to recharge my fast-draining emotional batteries. And I found that the symphonies of Edmund Rubbra provided just the calm and pause for nourishment that I needed. A deeply spiritual man, Rubbra wrote music of inner stillness, balance and contemplation, rather than drama or showmanship. Unlike many of his mid-20th-century contemporaries, he avoided angular dissonance and preferred flowing, modal harmonies that feel rooted in ancient chant and Renaissance polyphony.    

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Even his symphonies, though complex, rarely feel turbulent. Instead, they create a sense of spaciousness. And among them, the work that most often took me to a quiet, unhurried place was No. 5. Its final movement has an uplifting, meditative calm that can always renew me.

Steve Wright

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Rachmaninov: Piano Concerto No. 2

Anna Fedorova performs Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto No. 2 with Nordwestdeutsche Philharmonie conducted by Martin Panteleev

Whenever I feel down, I play Rachmaninov. Not just because his music offers a healthy dose of doom-and-gloom and allows for a good emotional wallow, but because his Second Piano Concerto holds a special place in my memory. 

Let me take you back: I’d just joined an orchestra for the first time as a nervous and clueless young teenager with barely any experience of playing with other people. I had no idea what to expect, but it certainly wasn’t those opening piano chords, tolling like great bells, and then suddenly being swept along by the stirring, surging minor-key melody. More than that: I was playing that melody! And it wasn’t complicated – even a fledgling viola player like me could manage the basically stepwise writing. I went home totally overwhelmed by the experience. Who knew music could be like that?    

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The spark and thrill of discovering Rachmaninov for the first time has always stuck with me. It’s become a symbol of possibility: don’t give up now, because something totally unexpected that will change your life for the better could be just round the corner. Or at the very least, you might encounter a brilliant piece of music that can transport you to another place for half an hour.

Rebecca Franks

Tchaikovsky Symphony No. 6, ‘Pathétique’ – Allegro molto vivace

Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France conducted by Myung-Whun Chung performs the Allegro molto vivace from Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 6

To be honest, when my spirits are at their lowest, I want to be surrounded by silence – playing music is likely to prove more of an irritant than a balm. There is, however, one exception: the third-movement march from Tchaikovsky’s ‘Pathétique’ Symphony, a reliable friend whose company I’ve enjoyed since my parents played it in the car when I was a youngster (LSO, Leopold Stokowski, coffee-coloured cassette case). 

Right from the outset, it was all about the frisky main tune, based on a pair of perky perfect-fourth intervals and first played in full by the clarinet – which, as I’d sussed from the cat in Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf, is the orchestra’s most genial, happy-go-lucky member. I often found myself humming that tune to cheer myself up in gloomier moments – not least, as a boarder at the world’s most wretched choir school – and doing so still works its magic today.    

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Of course, I appreciate now that in the context of the whole symphony, and particularly the collapse into abject misery that follows, the third movement’s projection of optimism can be viewed as hollow or even desperate. However, my nine-year-old self didn’t see it that way, and – as a standalone piece, at least – it still defiantly says to my adult self ‘Cheer up, JP. There are better times ahead.’