 
How did you come to be a conductor?
It’s a curious thing how many people have made their progress through becoming cathedral or collegiate organists. I took my ARCO and my FRCO in my teens and did well enough that I became Organ Student at St John’s College, Cambridge. In that position, when George Guest, the organist, was away for any reason, I found myself conducting this magnificent choir.There is a sort of tradition that runs through it of, one could only call it, ‘picking it up as you go along’. I was never really given any formal instruction so what I know is what I have observed in others, what I have read about and my own practical experience. I think there is a very big difference between conducting and almost anything else in terms of musical performance, in that if you are a singer or a violinist, you can do a lot of your practice privately. Of course the conductor has to do a lot of private study with the scores, but at the same time, when you actually come to do it you are making your mistakes in public, or at least in rehearsals. I would say that from my own experience you simply have to learn from what works and what doesn’t work. If the choir doesn’t come in together, the first thing you should do is not to blame the choir but to ask yourself, ‘was my beat clear?’ – just to give a simple example.
I imagine it might sometimes be quite a daunting experience?
Yes, I think it can be.There are two ways I have tried to counter feelings of that kind – although one doesn’t entirely suppress them because of course, in a way, it’s a daunting proposition to think of conducting any piece of music vis à vis the music, let alone the people you are working with! One is to try to be very thoroughly prepared. If the group of people you are conducting think that you are on top of the piece, that you know it, they will respond better – particularly professional musicians are very quick to notice if somebody has not done their homework.The other, and this has taken me longer to learn, is the psychology of the thing; the mood you create in rehearsal of being sufficiently forthright and clear about what you want to do, and people expect that. At the same time, it’s very important you show your respect for the musicians, that you respect their own talents and their wish to have their own input into the thing. Getting that mixture right is sometimes difficult and of course how you do it varies according to whether you are dealing with professionals, amateurs or children.
You have obviously conducted many different instrumental ensembles, what is the attraction of conducting a choir?
I think the thing about singing is that it’s an extremely personal thing. Clearly if you have a sore throat you actually can’t sing at all but you could still play the piano, even though you might not feel very well, so the voice is very connected with the person – how the person is feeling, how he/she wants to express themselves. In many ways, it can be one of the most expressive instruments. And of course, although I don’t think this peculiar to singing, the actual physical sensation of the sounds can be very exciting. I can remember a year or two ago going to conduct the Mormon Tabernacle choir and hearing 300 people sing pianissimo is one marvellous effect. At the same time, I can also remember the first full-length concert I conducted with the BBC Singers in St John’s, Smith Square, where the sheer power and physicality of the singing was an extraordinary thing to experience, standing in the middle of it.
What different demands does choral conducting make, compared to standing in front of an orchestra?
I think I could pick on maybe three things. With an orchestra, it’s extremely important to give a clear beat particularly with wind and brass players who, because they are going to tongue the note, need a very precise beat to know when to play (with strings it’s a little different because sometimes a note can be stroked into play rather than attacked – to use that awful word!) With voices, very often they need the encouragement of the gesture that will help the line of their singing, their feeling of breathing and the proper use of breath. Having said that, of course, those things are also important to instrumentalists – wind players breathe and have to play with line – but you have to think about them a bit more with singers and encourage them more to do that. Intonation, or one might even talk about accuracy of notes, is a different thing with choirs because with orchestras, to a large extent, the notes are made. Obviously in a wind group, the players themselves are listening very carefully and consciously adjusting tuning to make it work but they are not going to do a piece and go a semitone flat, whereas some choirs do. So when you are conducting a choir you have to bring a particular part of your ear to bear on the pitch, in a way that is different. Obviously, an orchestra has to play in tune but the problems are different and it is a particular thing that choral conductors have to contend with. Overall, there is the question of breathing so the posture that you, as the conductor, show to the choir is possibly more critical in that in order to sing well, you need to stand well. A conductor looking very tense or crouching on the rostrum, particularly I think with amateur singers, is not a good example.Again, I wouldn’t say these things are specifically choral concerns. I think there is a rather regrettable divide, people talk about orchestral conductors and choral conductors, as if they are two completely different things. In fact there’s a lot of overlap but there are certain things that need special care with a choir.
How did you first come to be associated with the BBC Singers?
When I was working in London, from about the mid-1970s onwards, I used to be asked to play the organ or répétiteur a bit – that was in the days of John Poole.Then they began to ask me to conduct the choir for the morning service from time to time but when I moved the Cambridge all that lapsed.Then I met Michael Emery at the launch of a Howells recording that King’s College Choir had done and he asked if I would like to come and conduct a programme with the BBC Singers, which I did. Gradually I found that they were asking me more often and then eventually I became the Chief Conductor.
You’ve been the BBC Singers Chief Conductor for 11 years.Were there any particularly memorable moments?
I’ve mentioned the first concert I did as their Chief Conductor in Smith Square, which was really significant. I suppose in a way one tends to remember things that might have been slightly problematic! I can remember going to Budapest for example and a lot of people becoming ill and the problems associated with that. I will remember some of the more challenging projects I have been given, notably Giles Swayne’s Havoc, more recently Gaia by Edward Cowie and, more recently still, Francis Grier’s The Passion of Jesus of Nazareth. Those have been enormously challenging and ultimately stimulating and rewarding experiences at the same time. At the other end of the spectrum, it’s been interesting to do quite simple music really well and to compare how a group of adult singers would sing a piece that I might also be doing with children and undergraduates in King’s College Choir.You can get two very fine performances from both groups and it has been interesting to me to see what I perceive as some sort of cross-fertilisation between the two. In other words, it’s the idea that you can create a unit, an ensemble, a blend with professional singers (which some people say is not easy to achieve because, as we know, within the BBC Singers we have voices of very distinguished solo quality). Going back to what I’ve said about the impact that first full-length concert, and obviously since then, the physicality of the sound – the variety of colour, the degree of expression they can achieve – is something which, working the other way, I’ve found is possible to work on with youngsters as well.The popular myth is that professional singers can’t be blended into a homogenous whole and youngsters can’t be made to sing with interesting colour or emotional content. I think one of the things I’ve learnt from working closely with both choirs is that those perceptions are indeed myths.
So what are the differences in conducting the BBC Singers and King’s College Choir?
Well, in a way there’s no difference because the chief thing that the conductor has to do is to serve the music.Your job is to create as good a performance as one can but also through that to put across the intellectual and emotional content of the music as you perceive it.That’s the same aim with both groups. With the professionals, the main thing is to try and bring them all to a unified understanding of what you are trying to do and with the youngsters there’s much more of an element of teaching in it. After all, more or less any piece I do with the King’s College Choir (because of the very fast turn-over of singers) is new to about 30 or 40 per cent of the choir. Some people say, ‘you must get very tired of doing the same things’, but in fact the challenge, the stimulus and subsequently the reward of teaching these youngster is something I found, as I get older, increases.
You are now the BBC Singers’ Conductor Laureate. What are your future plans with the group?
In a way it’s not for me to have plans. Even the Chief Conductor is not an artistic director position so it isn’t the case that I was driving the repertoire, because the Singers sing the repertoire that the BBC network needs, largely speaking.This year we’ve been involved in the BBC Symphony Orchestra’s January Composer Weekend (featuring the music of Sofia Gubaidulina) and later in the year we’re going on a tour to Finland. But in a way a big part of the stimulus of the job has been to be faced with repertoire that somebody else has chosen. Sometimes I have asked to do things and I do still say, ‘oh, I’d love to do that’, but it’s actually been rather challenging. Michael will ring up and say, ‘we’ve been asked to do such a programme and this is what I think we should do’, and that’s great because it’s opened new horizons, it’s led me into repertoire I didn’t know before.
Is there any piece you’ve particularly enjoyed doing?
The list would be very long! That’s very difficult because I’ve enjoyed so much of it. Do you know, I don’t think I can give you an answer to that. I so much enjoy doing repertoire of varying kinds with the Singers that I am happy to do whatever I am asked to do.
Stephen Cleobury was talking to Lottie Fenby. |
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