Baton down the hatches

A good rehearsal is…

…well-planned. A rehearsal outline, with reasonably accurate time allotments, is step one. As a violinist, I pretty much play everything all the time, but it saves time and helps with pacing when I know what’s coming at me in the next two and a half hours. We also have a lot of music to learn, and it’s sometimes good to know that we won’t play the concerto until Thursday, so practice time on Tuesday can be better spent on the symphony. A plan that has logical instrumentation progression, usually biggest to smallest, is appreciated by those who don’t play every piece. At least that’s what they tell me. I’m a violinist, so I almost never get to knock off early anyway.

…varied. Two and a half hours of Bruckner tremolo is both mind-numbing and a tendon disaster. Good rehearsals vary the technical demands.

…efficient. If something isn’t working, it’s the conductor’s job to figure out why, and to figure it out soon. If a problem in a passage doesn’t solve itself on the first repetition, then belaboring it without analyzing the challenge doesn’t help. Frustration sets in quickly (and should be apparent to an observant conductor) and is antithetical to good music-making. Minor technical errors generally don’t need to be pointed out, since they are usually self-resolving. Intonation is one area that often does need the conductor’s ears, and again, just playing the chord over and over is unhelpful, while carefully tuning it helps a great deal.

…geared toward performance. At some point, we need to get a feel for continuity and architecture, especially in a piece that’s new to us. Just running through repertoire without solving problems is a waste of time, but by the final rehearsal, we do need a chance to work through the pacing, and to figure out how to plan our stamina.

…respectful. We musicians are good at self-validation, since we don’t get much positive feedback. That doesn’t mean that acknowledgment of good work isn’t welcome. Constant praise is fatuous, of course, but positive reinforcement is a good thing. Even “thank you, that’s better” after correcting a passage helps our collective confidence. If a musician asks to repeat a passage, or if, say, (ahem) the principal second asks for a few seconds to adjust a bowing or suggest a technique, that’s a good time to trust the musician’s judgment and defer. In the long run, we really are saving time.

…clear. I always enjoy it when a musician says, after a conductor’s extended evocation of what s/he envisions, “So you want it louder?” It’s possible, and maybe even useful, to say you want it louder AND to explain why. Actually, I do enjoy the justification of an interpretation. I may not agree, but it’s so much more satisfying for me to help create a conductor’s concept when I know what the concept is. Absent any explanation, the interpretation becomes paternalistic, and condescension is one thing I just can’t stand. And metaphor and abstraction are fine, just not at the expense of clarity.