Stage fright: it’s the bane of most every performing musicians’ existence.

And when we say most every, we really do mean most every. In fact, many of the greatest figures in classical music history struggled with stage fright in one way or another.

Today, we’re looking at how it affected the lives, art, and careers of six composers.

Frédéric Chopin (1810-1849)

Portrait of Frédéric Chopin by Maria Wodzińska

Although Frédéric Chopin was widely acknowledged to be one of the most talented pianists of his generation, he only gave thirty public performances over the course of his career. The rest took part in the drawing rooms of Parisian aristocrats.

Part of this was due to his delicate playing style. It will come as no surprise to anyone familiar with his music that Chopin preferred to work in subtleties.

When he made his public debut in Vienna in 1829, he wrote to his family back in Poland:

…It is being said everywhere that I played too softly, or rather, too delicately for people used to the piano-pounding of the artists here… It doesn’t matter, there has always got to be a but somewhere, and I should rather it were that one than have people say I played too loud.

But his aversion to appearing in large halls wasn’t just that his playing was heard to its best advantage in aristocratic salons. It was also because he had a fear of playing for a large assembly of strangers.

After Chopin’s death, his friend Franz Liszt reported that Chopin once told him:

An audience intimidates me, I feel asphyxiated by its eager breath, paralyzed by its inquisitive stare, silenced by its alien faces.

In the end, Chopin made the problem largely irrelevant by choosing his audiences carefully and focusing on the aspects of piano playing that didn’t require a large hall or crowd to be fully appreciated.

Adolf von Henselt (1814-1889)

Portrait of Adolf von Henselt

Adolf von Henselt was born in 1814 in Bavaria. He grew up to be part of the extraordinary generation of musicians born in Europe around 1810 that included Mendelssohn, Chopin, Schumann, Liszt, and Wagner.

He began playing the violin at the age of three and the piano at five. He studied in Weimar and Vienna before withdrawing to work on his technique for a solid two years. When he emerged from his studies, he was a veritable piano playing machine.

Adolf von Henselt: Piano Concerto

Unfortunately, the one hurdle he couldn’t overcome was his paralyzing stage fright. It caused him to have a nervous breakdown when he was just twenty-two.

He went to the spa town of Carlsbad to seek a cure, then promptly fell in love with his doctor’s wife. He married her in 1837. (Read more about “Adolf von Henselt and Rosalie Vogel” )

After his marriage, he moved to St. Petersburg. There he focused more on teaching and less on performing and composing. He stopped composing before he was thirty and performing by thirty-three.

That’s certainly one way to deal with stage fright: leaving the stage entirely, and going into teaching instead!

Pyotr Tchaikovsky (1840-1893)

Tchaikovsky in 1868

When he was a child, Tchaikovsky’s governess described him as a “porcelain” child.

Strains of that early emotional fragility continued well into his adulthood. He was forever wavering between self-belief and self-doubt, especially when it came to his composing.

He placed a high value on the opinions of other musicians, and when their responses to his new compositions were cool or lukewarm, he would often become deeply upset.

He also had moments of intense fear and insecurity when it came to conducting.

Tchaikovsky’s ‘Dance of the Chambermaids’

In 1868, at the age of twenty-eight, he conducted a performance of his “Dances of the Chambermaids” from his opera The Voyevoda.

His friend Nikolay Kashkin later described the scene:

I could see from the moment Pyotr Ilyich appeared, he was a nervous wreck … He walked on between the orchestra’s desks, hunched up, as if he didn’t want anyone to see him. When he finally made it to the podium, he looked like a man who would rather be anywhere else.

He forgot every note of his own piece, was blind to the notes in his own score, and failed to give the players their cues at all the most crucial moments.

Luckily, the orchestra knew the piece so well that they took no notice of their inept conductor and all his incorrect instructions. They performed the piece perfectly well, occasionally looking up at the composer with big grins on their faces.

Eventually, Tchaikovsky became more comfortable on the podium. When Carnegie Hall opened in New York City in 1891 and hosted a week of gala events, he was a featured conductor.

Ignacy Jan Paderewski (1860-1941)

Ignacy Paderewski

Ignacy Jan Paderewski was born in present-day Ukraine to Polish parents. In 1872, when he was twelve, he moved to Warsaw to study at the Warsaw Conservatory.

In 1880, he married a fellow conservatory student, but unthinkable tragedy soon struck: their first baby was born severely handicapped, and his wife died weeks after giving birth.

During this time, he was supported by one of his friends, the uncle of Polish activist and author Maria Chełkowska.

Chełkowska relates in her memoirs that her uncle pushed Paderewski to return to the stage after the tragedy. He even arranged for Paderewski to give a comeback performance in the Polish city of Toruń.

Paderewski was terrified to take the stage until Chełkowska’s uncle reassured him, “Mr. Paderewski, here in Torun we do not know music well enough to criticise you.”

The observation gave Paderewski courage, and the concert went off without a hitch.

In the coming years, Paderewski conquered his stage fright enough to gain international renown and become one of the world’s most beloved pianists.

Jean Sibelius (1865-1957)

Jean Sibelius

Finnish composer Jean Sibelius began taking violin lessons as a child. He dreamed of becoming a violin soloist, but he ran up against the same obstacles that many thwarted musicians do. Later in life, he wrote:

My tragedy was that I wanted to be a celebrated violinist at any price.

Since the age of 15, I played my violin practically from morning to night. I hated pen and ink—unfortunately, I preferred an elegant violin bow.

My love for the violin lasted quite long, and it was a very painful awakening when I had to admit that I had begun my training for the exacting career of a virtuoso too late.

In his mid-twenties, he shifted his focus from playing the violin to conducting. But those performances didn’t come easily, either.

In 1903, when he was thirty-eight, he wrote to his brother, describing how he relied on alcohol to temper his stage fright:

There is much in my make-up that is weak… when I am standing in front of a grand orchestra and have drunk half a bottle of champagne, then I conduct like a young god. Otherwise, I am nervous and tremble, feel unsure of myself, and everything is lost.

We don’t recommend it, but Jean Sibelius certainly wasn’t the first nervous classical musician who self-medicated with alcohol!

Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971)

Photo of Igor Stravinsky. Taken by George Grantham Bain’s news picture agency.

Igor Stravinsky wrote in his autobiography:

At the beginning of my career as a piano soloist, I naturally suffered from stage fright, and for a long time, I had a good deal of difficulty in overcoming it.

It was only by habit and sustained effort that I managed, in time, to master my nerves and so to withstand one of the most distressing sensations that I know.

He went on to unpack the specific reason for his terror:

In analysing the cause of this stage fright, I have come to the conclusion that it is chiefly due to fear of a lapse of memory or of some distraction, however trifling, which might have irreparable consequences.

For the slightest gap, even a mere wavering, risks giving rise to a fatal discordance between the piano and the orchestral body, which obviously cannot, in any circumstances, hold the movement of its own part in suspense.

I remember at my first debut being seized by just such a lapse of memory, though it fortunately had no dire results. Having finished the first part of my Concerto, just before beginning the Largo, which opens with a piano solo, I suddenly realised that I had entirely forgotten how it started. I whispered this to Koussevitsky. He glanced at the score and whispered the first notes. That was enough to restore my balance and enable me to attack the Largo…

Final Thoughts

When you have stage fright, it’s easy to feel like you’re alone or somehow a failure.

But hopefully, reading the stories of these six great composers will provide solace as you learn how to subdue your anxiety and become comfortable onstage.

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