Undergraduate Choral Conducting Blog

I attended the performance of Britten’s “Noye’s Fludde� at Plymouth Congregational yesterday. Phillip Brunelle conducted an orchestral ensemble and chorus of mostly children with some adults mixed in and even pulled the congregation into a three-part round. He is truly an amazing local talent.

The most striking aspect of his conducting was the dramatic use of vertical space- his downbeat spanned probably two feet. This was an accommodation to the diverse ages and abilities of the musicians and also to the singers, who would have been able to catch the gesture in their peripheral vision. It got me thinking how when you work with a young or amateur group, in a way you have to be a better conductor, or at least, a more clear one.

For example, I recently caught Pierre-Louis Aimard with the SPCO. His playing was exquisite, but his conducting, unorthodox. On the podium, Aimard pretty much looked like he was still at the piano, holding his hands on a horizontal plane as if he was striking chords. For the most part, he just got out of the way to let the orchestra do its work. With musicians of that caliber, you can afford to be minimalist and abstract.

We will not have that luxury, though. I saw how Brunelle’s exaggerated clarity helped keep a difficult work together. Even though I didn’t know the piece or his conducting vocabulary, I was able to follow him easily. The preparation to every cue was perfectly timed, fluid, and predictable. It was certainly a contrast to the last works I saw him conduct, “Songs of Innocence and of Experience� and “A Bluegrass Mass.� Because he was working with professionals, his conducting was much more contained and subtle, though still very precise.

The only idiosyncrasy I noticed was that Brunelle kept his index fingers out like he was doing the Jitterbug. It worked fine for the orchestra, but a young singer might be a bit intimated.