Composers are not all good conductors.
From time to time, the Vienna Philharmonic could play without a conductor because they are so good.
When I am with composers, I say I am a conductor. When I am with conductors, I say I am a composer.
I always imagined that to bring an orchestra to play together is not enough for a conductor.
And if you are strong enough, then you can grow as a conductor more and more.
For me, the most enjoyable type of singing is opera. It allows you to move, to wear a costume. . . to do something with your body. When singing in concert, you have to stand up in front of the audience, next to the conductor, which is less natural.
A work of art may be understood as a conductor from the artist's mind to the viewer's. But it may never reach the viewer, or it may never leave the artist's mind.
A conductor can't be too arrogant with an orchestra and try to impose himself too much.
When I got out of college I moved to Seattle because it was the nearest big city and still didn't know if I wanted to be a composer, conductor, singer, actor. I just got day jobs and auditioned and took what came and the theater doors were the ones opening the most.
Is it not the business of the conductor to convey to the public in its dramatic form the central idea of a composition; and how can he convey that idea successfully if he does not enter heart and soul into the life of the music and the tale it unfolds?
You yourself may not be luminous, but you are a conductor of light.
The conductor has the advantage of not seeing the audience.
You know why conductors live so long? Because we perspire so much.
Conductors don't suffer, they are part of the performance.
An audience is an abstraction; it has no taste. It must depend on the only person who has (pardon, should have), the conductor.
I had a year at 3 when I wanted to be a conductor in the opera.
Acting is just playing the violin in an orchestra. Directing is being the conductor.
The life of any musician really doesn't fall into a normal schedule at all. Every week there are different rehearsals, different days and nights of performances, so we don't have a particular pattern that we can follow. For a conductor, it is a little bit worse because we have to allow for traveling.
You are the conductor of your own success train.
Wherever there’s a conductor, you’re sure to find a dead composer!
