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Welcome to the

Rehearsal Orchestra

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Expand your repertoire with the

Rehearsal Orchestra

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Build your confidence with the

Rehearsal Orchestra

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Develop your skills with the

Rehearsal Orchestra

Develop your skills on a Rehearsal Orchestra course

The main purpose of all our activities is, as our name implies, the process of rehearsal. Whether you’re a current or recent student, a retired professional or a fine amateur player from any walk of life, we’re here to help you build your orchestral skills and expand your repertoire at high level. We do not give concerts, but at the end of each course there is an open rehearsal, to which a non-paying audience is welcome.

Rehearsal Orchestra has no fixed membership or time commitment: you simply apply for the courses that interest you. Under Levon Parikian’s artistic directorship, we like to think we offer exciting repertoire for everyone across a season, including well-loved favourites and music you may not yet know you love!

At Rehearsal Orchestra you’ll benefit from a team of high-quality and experienced professional musicians. Conductors and section leaders are at the heart of everything we do, and their enthusiasm and expertise make every Rehearsal Orchestra course an inspiring experience.

The emphasis on the rehearsal process gives you the freedom to grow and learn at your own pace, whether as preparation for the profession or an alternative to your regular amateur playing.

"I recommend the RO to anyone looking to learn orchestral parts in a professional-style environment. It's so well run it feels like sitting in a professional orchestra but the conductors always smile!"

Jo Harris
Freelance trumpet player

"Wow, what an experience. Absolutely exhausting but thoroughly exhilarating."

Oboe

"I loved my weekend with you all. There is a tremendous spirit and enjoyment about everything that enables wonders to be achieved. Long may you thrive!"

Sir Mark Elder

"If anything from this list ever comes up in my career, I will just be so much more confident going into that first rehearsal."

Postgraduate clarinet
Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama

"It ranks up in the top 10 orchestral experiences for me."

Double bass

"The Rehearsal Orchestra does invaluable work on the quiet and with the minimum of fuss."

Sir Simon Rattle
RO Patron

"It was wonderful to be part of such a large, capable and responsive group of musicians! I'm rarely able to play with a group at such a high level and I very much enjoyed the level of challenge."

Violin

"I really appreciate how organised it was and that communication was always clear."

Violin
Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama

"I've recommended the Edinburgh course to quite a lot of my friends as it's quite rare to come across opportunities to play just that much rep and I really loved it."

Clarinet
Royal Birmingham Conservatoire

"The atmosphere is both welcoming and focussed, with each musician truly putting their best efforts into the project."

Violin
Play ON bursary scheme
Lev Parikian
One-Day Course

Shostakovich: Symphony No 5 Conducting workshop

9 November 2025
London
  • Shostakovich

    Symphony no 5

Join us for a rehearsal workshop with four conductors from the Royal College of Music’s postgraduate course in orchestral conducting, nominated by Toby Purser, the RCM’s Head of Conducting, each working on a movement of Shostakovich’s fifth symphony, under the supervision of our Artistic Director, Levon Parikian.
Applications are invited for all sections of the orchestra from players at Grade 8-plus, or equivalent.

More details
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One-Day Course

Bartók: The Wooden Prince Suite

8 February 2026
London
  • Béla Bartók

    The Wooden Prince Suite

Bartók wrote The Wooden Prince as a one-act pantomime ballet (1914–1916) to a scenario by Béla Balázs. Bartók described the ballet as “a kind of elaborate symphonic poem to be danced to”. Despite a successful premiere in 1917, he came to realise that there was much musical padding in the ballet (for which he blamed Balázs). Over the following fifteen years he made many cuts in the stage version, and produced two leaner orchestra suites.
Set in an enchanted forest, The Wooden Prince is based on a fairy tale-like libretto featuring a prince and princess. The two are subjected to various trials, but at the end of the ballet they are allowed to come together and live, we assume, happily ever after. The score’s first few minutes are dazzling, a folk-tinged re-tread of Das Rheingold’s opening, the ensuing music blending ardent romanticism with the grotesque.

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Two-Day Course

Richard Strauss: An Alpine Symphony

14 March 2026 - 15 March 2026
London
  • Richard Strauss

    An Alpine Symphony opus 64

Strauss’s tone poem An Alpine Symphony (Eine Alpensinfonie), premiered in 1915, describes the exhilarating expedition of a trek through the Alpine mountains, featuring waterfalls, glaciers and an ear-splitting storm. Scored for a large orchestra, with additional woodwind and brass, including a heckelphone, Wagner tubas and off-stage brass, the orchestration includes parts for wind and thunder machines, and cowbells.
Applications are invited for all sections of the orchestra from players at Grade 8-plus, or equivalent.

More details
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One-Day Course

Webern: Passacaglia; Ravel: Rapsodie espagnole

26 April 2026
London
  • Anton Webern

    Passacaglia

  • Maurice Ravel

    Rapsodie espagnole

These two contrasting masterpieces, by great composers of the 20th century whose musical styles took radically different paths, are united by a moment in time, both being composed in 1908.
Webern’s Passacaglia is, unlike his later work, for the most part lush in tone and texture, relating to a late-Romantic sound and melodic contours that he would later abandon in his quest for a personal, stripped-down style. The simple device of a passacaglia, a mainstay of the Baroque, consists of a short theme in the bass overlaid with a series of variations on that theme. Ravel was born in the Pyrenees, and his mother was Basque, and his lifelong attraction to and mastery of the Spanish idiom is undeniable. Written in only thirty days, the four-movement Rapsodie was an immediate success and firmly established Ravel as a master of the orchestral medium.

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One-Day Course

Clyne: Color Field; Mussorgsky, orch. Ravel: Pictures at an Exhibition

17 May 2026
Manchester
  • Clyne

    Color Field

  • Mussorgsky (orch Ravel)

    Pictures at an Exhibition

Mussorgsky’s famous wander round an exhibition of works by Viktor Hartmann, in Ravel’s splendid orchestration, is complemented by Anna Clyne’s 2020 three-movement work inspired by Mark Rothko’s 1961 painting Orange, Red, Yellow.
Applications are invited for all sections of the orchestra from players at Grade 8-plus, or equivalent.

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One-Day Course

Maconchy: Proud Thames; Vaughan Williams: Symphony No 6

21 June 2026
London
  • Proud Thames

    Maconchy

  • Symphony No 6

    Vaughan Williams

Vaughan Williams’ Sixth Symphony was his first major post-war work, and its sometimes violent mood inevitably led to it being known as his ‘War Symphony’ – to which he replied “it never seems to occur to people that a man might just want to write a piece of music.” It is paired with his pupil Maconchy’s prize-winning overture, written in celebration of the Thames, depicting “its rapid growth from small beginnings to a great river of sound.”
Applications are invited for all sections of the orchestra from players at Grade 8-plus, or equivalent.

More details
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Who are we?

For nearly 70 years, the Rehearsal Orchestra has run orchestral courses for future professionals and talented amateurs, helping thousands of musicians excel in their playing. Our courses simulate professional rehearsal conditions, replicating the speed and focus required for preparing a piece on limited rehearsal time.

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Latest News

15 Aug 2025
Congrats to Gwyn Owen

We’re thrilled for alumnus Gwyn Owen, recently appointed Associate Principal 3rd Trumpet at the BBC Philharmonic.