Player Music Resources

October 2026 concert – Myths & Legends

About the music/practice tips/markings for parts

Richard Wagner – Prelude to Götterdämmerung

The Prelude to Götterdämmerung is one of Wagner’s most atmospheric openings, built from long, suspended chords that seem to emerge out of darkness. The music barely moves on the surface, but underneath it shifts through a series of unusual keys that create a sense of unease and inevitability. It sets the tone for the final part of the Ring, where the world is already beginning to unravel.

Recordings
Notes/instructions
  • You need to print off your music for this. It’s the first page of your part – downloaded from IMSLP and we will be playing the first 26 bars of the piece. If you are unable to print your music by the time of the first rehearsal, please complete this form as soon as possible (this enables us to spread the printing load, so please don’t wait until the last minute).
  • Cellos, we’ll modify your last bar slightly and pause briefly on the last beat before going straight into the Zimmer.
  • Trombones – you can come off after bar 24 to give you a little break before going straight into the Zimmer (the Wagner tuba parts will be covered on organ but they don’t play for the last phrase, so the organ can cover you there (along with the bass trumpet part).
  • Tempo roughly crotchet = 100, beat in 6
  • To get your ears trained to the unusual keys Wagner shifts between, you want to practise E‑flat minor, E‑flat diminished 7th and F diminished 7th arpeggios and broken chords; strings, add C‑flat major (or B major, if you prefer, though the part reads in C‑flat) and D‑flat minor scales to the list. This will help you get used to the intervals in the harmony for those parts which move (mainly strings) and help the rest of you nail the tuning in the chords.
Hans Zimmer – Chevaliers De Sangreal
Recordings
About the music

Zimmer’s music for The Da Vinci Code reaches its most intense point at the very end of the film, where the final realisation leads to the big reveal. This cue takes simple, repetitive material and builds it into a dark, pulsing texture that carries the scene’s sense of discovery and inevitability. It’s classic Zimmer: atmospheric, driven and far more powerful than the notes on the page suggest.

Notes/instructions
  • Tempo as marked – dotted crotchet = 54
  • The notes in the Zimmer are straightforward and very repetitive, so it’s worth marking a few landmarks in your part to help count repeated bars or rests. You can grab the spare score in a break if that helps.
  • Although the notes are easy, rehearsal time will focus on tight articulation and sound. We won’t be able to balance it properly until the day, but we can prepare the clarity and control that create the tension the piece relies on.
  • Some of the writing is, shall we say, not the finest orchestration. Trombones get almost no breathing space, so we’ll agree a sensible approach. There’s plenty of cover, and the organ will feature again to add epic weight to the bass sound and support the choir lines.

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky – Francesca da Rimini

About the music

Tchaikovsky’s Francesca da Rimini is one of his most dramatic symphonic stories, drawn from Canto V of Dante’s Inferno, where Francesca and her lover, Paulo, are condemned to the whirlwind of the second circle of Hell – the circle of the lustful. The outer sections depict that storm with ferocious intensity, but at the centre of the piece lies the love story itself: a long, lyrical passage that feels – like most Tchaikovsky – pure ballet, full of warmth, tenderness and doomed beauty. The contrast between the violent outer world and the intimate middle scene is the emotional heart of the work.

(Recordings in notes below)

Practice music download link: https://imslp.org/wiki/Francesca_da_Rimini%2C_Op.32_(Tchaikovsky%2C_Pyotr)

Notes/instructions
  • The practice priority here is definitely the Allegro vivo – which we’ll look to play at around dotted crotchet = 106-110 – a lot slower than most recordings. Lots of evil notes but before you can even get close to them, you’ve got lots of rhythmic disruption to cope with, with ties, off-beat entries, twos against threes, etc. Add in being in 6/8, and it’s hard to read quickly. It’s essential not to turn up for your first rehearsal without having “bopped”1 through your parts with a recording several times. The first rehearsal might be very unproductive and unenjoyable if we’re all at sixes and sevens trying to compute the rhythms, let alone the tricky notes.
  • Back to the start of the piece, the Andante lugubre needs to be really broad, so while I’ll beat it in a slow four crotchets (at 48-52 bpm) don’t be surprised if I show quaver beats occasionally.
  • Grace notes come enough before the beat not to be so squashed you can’t hear all of them and sometimes I may linger on the first beat of a phrase to allow the tam-tam sound to blossom, so make sure you watch – a good example is at bar 9.
  • The Piu mosso steps up to somewhere around 76-80 bpm for the crotchet pulse. This is where the twos against threes begin in earnest, so although it’s slow, keep the sub-division in two or three really disciplined to create that rhythmic tension. Sometimes in the notation, slurred groups of three duplet quavers over 1.5 beats can look like triplets, so watch out for these and mark them up accordingly.
  • Having accelerated to around crotchet 112, it’s quite a gear change to get back to Tempo I seven bars before the Allegro vivo. There is a ritenuto marked two bars before, but in reality we’ll probably start winding it back a couple of bars before that, so please put pairs of glasses in parts here.
  • For the clarinet solo leading into the Andante cantabile non troppo, I’ll stop beating and start again at the 4/4 of the Andante. This will be colla parte with Louise, so listen and watch carefully!
  • Once Louise finishes and the melody passes to the violins, we’ll move on quite a bit.
  • Moving on again at 13.
  • Pulling back with the largamente (marked only in the strings) two before 14.
  • Where the cellos take over the tune at the 12th of 14, we won’t move it on immediately, but we will a few bars later. The idea is to be nice and light/floaty for the cor anglais entry where it’s marked ‘L’istesso tempo’. With every new mini-section (I like to think of them as different ensemble ballet dancers coming on/forward to dance their little section) we get a bit lighter of foot.
  • 16 – as quick as we’re going to get – if anything a little steadier so we can be precise about the violins’ semis/demis entries.
  • A lot of recordings push into 17. I want to do the opposite and broaden, starting about four bars before then using the strings’ semiquavers really sostenuto and bringing us back to the ‘serious’ love story again.
  • After the poco accelerando at the 9th of 17, the two bars before 18 will be used to broaden again, with the semiquavers in the bar of 18 really largamente – setting the scene for the epic bassoon/trombone entry.
  • Please mark the 15th of 18 as 18a. On the 11th bar of 18a there’s an Allegro vivo (but not the 6/8 one – still in 4/4 at this point). This is simply double the speed of the previous tempo, so going from around crotchet = 60-64 to crotchet = 120-128. No pushing through the preceding “1812” fanfares please, horns and trumpets! Also, on the change in tempo, really hit the second beat rhythm ferociously, without making the first beat crotchet weak or short.
  • After the big third beat bang climax 10 before the next (6/8) Allegro vivo, we’ll pull the tempo back through all that follows into the pause bar before the 6/8, so please mark that in.
  • The poco piu mosso at the end will be around crotchet = 124. Avoid the temptation to play faster!
  • The 2/4 nine before the end is roughly half the speed, so be aware of this and don’t be the player that crashes in early. We’ll probably push through the first three of the last five crotchets then pull it back for the last cadence.
Jean Sibelius – Symphony No. 2

Sibelius’s Second Symphony is one of his most open‑hearted works, built from small, organic musical ideas that grow almost imperceptibly into broad, sweeping landscapes. It was the first piece I ever played in Reading Youth Orchestra and I didn’t have a clue what was going on, partly because I’d never come across a fast 6/4 beat in two in choral church music, but partly because the musical language is so distinct. I’ve found that when we’ve played Sibelius symphonies before, it’s taken us a while to settle in amongst the musical syntax and sound world he creates, so familiarity via listening is – with the exception of the third movement’s ferociously fast pace – as valuable as getting your instrument out. Across its four movements the music moves from unease and fragmentation to clarity, warmth and finally a blazing sense of affirmation, unfolding with the natural inevitability of something coming into focus.

Recommended recordings:

First movement

  • Very important – the first beat you see will be a downbeat – that’s the first beat in the score. The string entry is off the second beat of the piece. I say this as if you’re counting rests and you don’t know this, it can lead to disastrous miscounts on entries, as happened in one professional performance I was present for, during my uni days.
  • Tempo – dotted minim = 74
  • Poco allegro at C = 82 – this is the tempo that I prefer to go back to at E for ‘a tempo’.
  • The pause before the Tempo I at 260 is quite short – and of course we go right back to the starting tempo (74) thereafter. Similar short pauses at O and three before P.

Second movement

  • Tempo – crotchet (first bar) or dotted minim (in the 3/8) roughly 48 bpm
  • Poco allegro – crotchet = 84 (maybe pushing a bit with excitement)
  • Poco largamente = 74
  • D – Molto largamente = 56. The super soft Andante sostenuto that follows the long silent pause is roughly the same.
  • F – Andante con moto ed energico = 68. Slightly calmer after the pause at 119 even though it’s not marked so.
  • Second of G – Allegro = 104 (faster than the pocol allegro with similar material earlier in the movement)
  • A lot of recordings go a lot faster than the Andante tempo set four before O, on reaching the demisemiquaver fun after O. I don’t intend to. This has several related implications:
    • Wind – you can’t just trill the demisemiquavers, both in the third and fourth of O and two before P – they’re measured!
    • I want to control the con forza three quavers leading into the fifth of O with quaver beats, so whether you’re playing or counting, be aware of this.
    • I also want to control the pesante quaver upbeats into the second of P, but slightly less held back (really just so we can really grip the string to make the pizz heavy enough). I might even stay in ‘8’ (a split 4) all the way to the penultimate bar of the movement (I didn’t last time, but I might give it a try to see if it creates more breadth).

Third movement

  • Bop it before rehearsal! Else your brain won’t keep up with the pace and some of the rhythms that are hard to translate from the dots without familiarity.
  • Vivacissimo – dotted minim (i.e. one in a bar) = 82-90
  • E – Lento e soave – dotted minim (i.e. in 4) = 48 – though the first bar will be shaped by Michael how he pleases. General principal is that the repeated crotchets wind up from a slow start and we take our time on the fourth beat tenuto.
  • The fun that starts at K we’ll work out in rehearsal, as I have several ways to explore getting the best out of the brilliant transition to the fourth movement.

Fourth movement

  • Allegro moderato – minim (in 3) = 82-90
  • After the poco stringendo, the pesante three before B is effectively a poco meno mosso, with the ritenuto the bar before B an even more substantial pull back, so pairs of glasses in parts, please. The same three before M but even more so, leading up to that delicious interrupted cadence.
  • D – Moderato assai – calmer, right on the barline so extra awareness required – minim = 76 and then obviously pulling back further with the subsequent allargando getting slower than (rather than slowing into) into a tempo ma tranquillo (which I take to be a tempo back into the moderato tempo – so slightly slower than 76)
  • F – Meno moderato e poco a poco ravvivando il tempo – there are many interpretations of how fast to get and for how long – ours won’t necessarily be the same as your recording! For me, the ravvivando il tempo lasts all the way from F to K – that’s a long time so if we go too early we’ll end up having to go really fast (a la Rattle – it’s very exciting but possibly a bit too much). We’ll have a lot of fun with this section.
  • Bar before O is a big allargando – probably to the extent that I show the last two crotchet beats, so extra watching there.
  • Two bars before S – trombones, cellos and basses (and violins and violas for changing notes on your scrubbing) – please mark in an unofficial allargando – quite a big one with me showing crotchets by the end.
  • The Tempo I at S will probably be a bit slower than a strict Tempo I, to allow for headbanging by the cellos and basses.
  • 6th of S – strings please mark that down to mf, crescendo only to f at the molto largamente, then ff two before T, then fff one before T. There’s a chance I might encourage you there…
  • I’ll probably show the crotchet upbeat into the fourth bar from the end.

  1. A note about “bopping”
    In orchestral practice, to “bop” a part through means to go through the music in rhythm without actually playing the notes. You speak, whisper, tap or lightly articulate the rhythm of your line while listening to a recording, keeping the pulse, accents and phrasing exactly as you would in performance.

    Players use it to:
    – internalise tricky rhythms, hemiolas or off‑beat entries
    – feel how their line fits into the larger texture
    – practise articulation shapes without the distraction of pitch or fingerwork
    – rehearse at full tempo before the notes are secure

    It’s a way of getting the rhythm and style into your body so that when you do play, the notes sit in the right place automatically. ↩︎