Charles Dutoit was born in Lausanne, Switzerland on Oct. 7, 1936. He began his studies at the Lausanne Conservatory for violin, piano, and orchestral conducting, eventually graduating from the Conservatoire de musique de Genève.[1] After gaining this achievement, he moved again, this time at the behest of conductor Alceo Galliera to the Academia Musicale Chigiana in Siena. Among his other professional acquaintances who mentored him, one will also find Ernest Ansermet, Herbert von Karajan, and Charles Munch. Ansermet was one of the biggest influences in Dutoit’s career as a conductor. Ansermet and the Suisse Romande Orchestra began his experiences in the orchestral world. Ansermet’s best repertoire, which consisted of many French and Russian greats from multiple time periods, but primarily focused around the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, also became repertoire that Dutoit has shown himself to be suited to as well. As an actual conductor, he seems to have modeled himself after Charles Munch, who acted as a mentor when they met at Tanglewood Music Center in Boston, Massachusetts.[2] In 1957, Dutoit began his professional music career as a viola player, before he went back to Switzerland to conduct. One of the positions that he is most famous for holding is the twenty-five years he spent with the Orchestre Symphonique de Montreal, building up the ensemble from 1977 until the year he left in 2002. He has also been a guest conductor for all of the major orchestras at least once, performing on nearly all the main stages in the world[3]. He has also conducted some opera productions, albeit with mixed reviews. [4] Today, he works as the Artistic Director and Principal Conductor of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in London. [5]

I watched him conduct Berlioz’s Le Corsaire, Overture Op. 21 with the Verbier Festival Orchestra in 2010[6]. One aspect of his conducting that I noticed almost immediately was his use of large, emotional gestures almost regardless of dynamic. In conjunction with this, he tends to use a rather large box when he conducts, oftentimes changing the shape of it drastically throughout a performance depending on what different moments the piece calls for in regards to shaping and articulation. The contrasts between his gestures and the correlating box size for different types of articulation can range from being huge and sweeping one moment, sometimes making the box he conducts in as large as from almost the top of his shoulder to his hip, while the next moment, it shrinks to a box smaller than what we would use to conduct a piano dynamic marking in class all the way up around his shoulders. There is one instance where his gesture is so broad in length that his baton actually points down for a full measure. He also has a tendency to use both hands in this expressive manner, whether they are going the same way, or in some instances actually working perpendicular to each other. One example of this happens towards the very end of the piece where his two pattern is beating time side to side rather than up and down and his left hand is creating quick, lyrical phrases up and down, almost as if imitating the violins’ lines themselves. And speaking of physically imitating the music that is being played, there is one section where it seems almost like he is shaping the body movement of the violin and viola players rather than the music itself. He makes a gesture that appears to be a crescendo, but while there is a definite shift in what is happening musically, the most noticeable thing at that moment is how all the string players in the first two rows are physically rocking back and forth with the phrases of music in sync with each other and the conductor, who is almost bending at the waist to achieve this similar motion. Despite copious amounts of physical expression, Dutoit’s face does not change much during the course of the performance. He looks very concentrated. However, he still comes across as an extremely expressive conductor because he uses his body to create the expression that his face lacks. Although, there is one notable time in this particular video where he cracks a smile just for the last few bars and it lights up the orchestra. It seems like he waited until the journey they were taking together was essentially over before he let them know how happy and proud of them he was, even if it was just a second of a nonverbal method of communication.

Aside from his general body expressivity, there are other things that he does that seem to have a more practical use. For example, he turns his full body to cue at times, particularly when the music is thick and there is a lot going on. He even goes so far as to travel within the podium space, either for giving cues or just to give shaping instructions to other parts of the orchestra that are farther away from him in space. Something I found interesting was that because of his extremely emotional body movements, there are times where he seems to do something that helps to reign in his movements a little bit so they do not lose their clarity or their effect. Because he is conducting in two, there are few places that the pattern could go and remain clear. In addition, if it gets too monstrously large and muddy, it will be impossible to figure out where the ictus is and to stay together. Due to the width of his beat two, it tends to go further and further to the side. When it gets out to a certain distance, he begins to follow it with his body, maybe as an attempt to shift the box that the players he is paying particular attention to are looking at, and then gradually brings the width back down to a more expected one and in a more general area that can be seen better by the majority of the orchestra.

As a player, I would find this a little distracting and annoying at first, but I feel that after I got used to it, not only would no longer bother me, but even if it did, I think it would be a fair trade off for the high quality of music I was being privileged to help make. It is also obvious that he is aware of the physical weight of his wild movements, because he purposely makes everything quick and light so as to stay true to the style of the piece, only indulging in anything heavy and deliberate when it is absolutely called for by the music. He never lets the physical weight of his arms show in his movements, except when he absolutely means for it to show.

Dutoit’s heaviest actions are used sparingly and create a vastly different effect in different parts of the orchestra that makes for a very effective contrast. One example of this is when the basses have a moving line towards the end of the piece and the other lines are all much more static, considering the texture. He faces them directly and uses a heavy, downward fist to indicate that he wants that line to come out of the texture and also to be given more weight as the notes are played. Because these are string instruments, it requires a heaviness that is achieved through more weighted bowing. I think the more forceful fist gesture is effective because it helps the string players get more of a sense for that he wants from them. I think it would be difficult to get the same result from a wind player using this gesture.

Often times, it seems like his heaviest movements are also when he physically imitates the line of the music he is trying to shape, or when he is altering the passage of musical time. He also knows that with so many wild movements, unless he uses a wide variety, the musicians will undoubtedly be inattentive at times. To circumvent this issue, he changes his movements constantly. He uses a whole array of different, full body motions, one time even daring to completely stop conducting for a full few bars and letting the orchestra direct themselves until he jumped back in to shape a particular phrase. Many times, he seems to put emotional expression of the music above all else. For the last couple bars, he stopped beating time altogether, and dedicated both of his hands and arms to shape the last few notes, only actually using his baton for the final cutoff. I absolutely appreciate his passionate and emotional approach to conducting, especially in a Romantic piece like this one, where emotional expression is of the utmost importance.

However, as a musician, I am quite sure that rehearsals could probably get a little frustrating at times if he was not transparent about what some gestures specifically mean. For example, the rocking motion I mentioned earlier. I do not know if that was something intentional that was worked on or if it just happened, but either way, that had to have taken a lot of practice and communication with the conductor to understand what and why he wanted something like that to happen at that particular spot. Another example would be just how he generally conducts most dynamics at around the same size instead of adjusting to a smaller or bigger box depending on the dynamic. He uses a wide variety of motions so that the musicians will not tune him out. On the other hand, that means they need to not only pay close attention to him, but also to know what all of his varied crazy gestures mean. For the most part I would say they are clear and I would be able to know what he wanted from me without saying anything. He may use many large, and even sometimes wild movements, but it is really the drastic size changes that make most of them seem almost unruly. I would say that is a pretty brilliant move on his part. He gets the emotional output he wants, the musicians are forced to constantly pay attention, and in general, I do not think he is sacrificing much in the way of clarity.

In my opinion, I do quite like his style of conducting. It not only gets the job done effectively, but it gets so much emotion across through the course of the piece as well. Music is such an immensely communicative medium. It generates even more of an experience for the audience when one can physically see, as well as hear and feel the emotions that play through the air, decorating it with an almost tangible sense of being, as they gradually conquer the space around the listener. In this case, his expressive physical style is very appropriate because Berlioz was a Romantic composer and his music was written dramatically and meant to be performed in the same way. Oddly enough, even though I think he does a fantastic job of communicating the emotions of the pieces he conducts, he does not feel the same way. In an interview he did where questions were sent in for him to answer, someone asked if he liked to watch himself conduct. His answer was that he hates to watch himself because it makes him look back on a performance that likely went very well, and start to feel that he did not express enough through his conducting to do the piece justice, even going so far as to call it inexpressive. He also feels that his conducting generally looks “clumsy and just not good on video”[7].

While from a technical, by the rules standpoint and based on what I have learned in conducting classes, he could absolutely be called clumsy and ineffective and a whole host of other things, he is absolutely not inexpressive in my opinion. If anything, from my point of view, the reason he would be labeled negatively in a “by the book” fashion to begin with is because he is so expressive in every movement he makes. On the other hand, because all of his movements are very purposefully and expertly directed in the character of the piece and he manages to keep everyone clearly together and musically immersed, in my mind that also makes up for what may be lacking in “functional technique” during a performance. As far as basics like tempo and clarity are concerned, he is clear and his tempos are deliberate and well controlled. As long as he has those, everything else is fairly relative. Overall, I feel that Charles Dutoit is an excellent orchestral conductor.

[1] Staff, Rovi. "Charles Dutoit." All Music. Accessed June 20, 2016. http://www.allmusic.com/artist/charles-dutoit-mn0000086109/biography.

[2] Macdonald, Hugh. "The Dutoit Record." Opera News 70, no. 1 (July 2005): 42-45.

[3] "Charles Dutoit." The Philadelphia Orchestra. 2011. Accessed May 20, 2016. https://www.philorch.org/about/conductors/charles-dutoit#/.

[4] Macdonald, Hugh. "The Dutoit Record." Opera News 70, no. 1 (July 2005): 42-45.

[5] "Charles Dutoit." The Philadelphia Orchestra. 2011. Accessed May 20, 2016. https://www.philorch.org/about/conductors/charles-dutoit#/.

[6] “Hector Berlioz – Le Corsaire, Overture Opus 21”. YouTube video, 9:14. Posted by “EuroArtsChannel”. February 11, 2016.

[7] “Charles Dutoit – Verbier Festival 2013 – Interview”. YouTube video, 2:59. Posted by “medici.tv”. July 20, 2013.