Play along

When I'm working on a piece of orchestral music, I like to play along with recordings. It's not the only way I practise my part, but I try to make sure every second time I work on something, I play it in full with a recording in my practice session.

It helps me work on a few things, that aren't necessarily just the mechanics of the left hand:

• Trying to match other sections phrasing, in a way I wouldn't feel comfortable doing in rehearsal
• Learning to pace myself for the whole work
• Building stamina
• Taking the time to really listen how my part fits in to the whole

Obviously what my section leader and conductor says in rehearsal comes first in terms of interpretation, but often their advice is close to what I'm hearing on record anyway. More than once the experience of blundering around with my bits this way at home has made me faster at picking up what's being asked of me in rehearsal.

It's easy to skip over repeated sections when you're practising on your own, god knows we see enough repeated quavers marching on forever across the page in Mozart and Haydn. No one wants to spend an hour doing that. But of course if you're playing along with someone, you're going to end up playing them all. I found I was getting more and more tense through these passages and I managed to relax a bit. I would have noticed that practically the day before the concert if I only ever played it through in rehearsals.

I'm still building up stamina as a player, and you don't usually run the whole symphony (or whatever) in rehearsal. Even when I'm playing a lot in rehearsal, it's not as constant as running the whole work. Until I'm much more experienced, I need to run the whole thing at home regularly to learn how to hold something in reserve for a demanding presto or a long and sustained adagio movement.

Plus this means I can practise coming in, nice and loud and committed, without making a complete fool of myself when I get it two beats early. Well, it doesn't guarantee I won't do that again I suppose!