Top 73 Conductors Quotes & Sayings

The composers could no longer direct all performances in person, and so the responsibility of interpreting their works in the spirit in which they had been conceived was placed upon conductors.

Catalysts are the conductors who choreograph the chemical dance that results in the formation of new structures.

I enjoyed harassing tram conductors.

Drummers are conductors - we set the pace for the music - so if you're not relaxed and feeling right, the whole thing goes out the window.

Conductors must give unmistakable and suggestive signals to the orchestra, not choreography to the audience.

I was starting a group of musicians and we had a group of young composers in Finland back in the '70s, and the real conductors, the professional conductors at the time were not interested in our stuff.

Journalists were never intended to be the cheerleaders of a society, the conductors of applause, the sycophants. Tragically, that is their assigned role in authoritarian societies, but not here - not yet.

Conductors don't suffer, they are part of the performance.

There is a class of persons whose souls are essentially non-conductors to the electricity of sentiment, and whose minds seem to be filled with their own train of thinking, convictions, and purposes to the exclusion of everything else.

I can count on one hand the number of conductors-composers-arrangers that I enjoy working with, and at the top of that list is Mack Wilberg. I feel like I've known Mack forever. I'm just nuts for him.

The great leaders are like the best conductors - they reach beyond the notes to reach the magic in the players.

I played with the best conductors of the world.

Of course, all people have their own reasons for believing what they do about gender. In my case, in over two decades of collaborating with men and women in music - conductors or otherwise - I have seen no distinction.

On the other hand, when I give it closer thought, I realize I'm not enough of a dictator to conduct an orchestra because it requires a pretty awful person. When you read these biographies of famous conductors, they are all awful people who fail in their private relationships.

Perhaps, once I am gone, the one thing I might be remembered for is having sung a great deal of Mahler with a great many phenomenal conductors. It is wonderful music, very spiritual.

Young conductors who are confident enough, they very often have success.

The eloquence of one stimulates all the rest, some up to the speaking-point, and all others to a degree that makes them good receivers and conductors, and they avenge themselves for their enforced silence by increased loquacity on their return.

The merit of poetry, in its wildest forms, still consists in its truth-truth conveyed to the understanding, not directly by the words, but circuitously by means of imaginative associations, which serve as its conductors.

Conducting is a strange thing to teach. There are very few great conducting teachers, and most great conductors don't teach. Look at Valery Gergiev - what he does is not teachable. A lot of it is on-the-job training, what works and what doesn't work.

I have a big problem with conductors who gesture a lot.

Good conductors know when to let an orchestra lead itself. Ninety percent of what a conductor does comes in the rehearsal - the vision, the structure, the architecture.

My father's Alfred Newman - born in 1900, child prodigy at the piano, ended up in pit orchestras in the teens. I think he's one of the youngest conductors to conduct Broadway and worked with George Gershwin and Jerome Kern and Cole Porter - went out with Irvin Berlin in 1930 to Hollywood and never left.

I played with the best conductors of the world.

There are two types of conductors. One is the good conductor who can do passionate music but also listen to the singers and do the orchestra. And then there are great conductors, who have their own opinion on the music, who are ruling everything - and not listening much to the singers, but the orchestra play amazingly.

Composers are not all good conductors.

Good conductors know when to push and when to lay back. I've known so many great conductors that I'm still doing what I can to learn the craft of this role.

I've always been accused of moving around too much when I play concertos. Sometimes, conductors ask me which of us is leading.

Conductors start getting good when everybody else retires.

I think conductors do spend too little time with their orchestras.

When I was young, Tchaikovsky was ruined for me by conductors who made it slick and treacly. Hearing Valery Gergiev conduct Tchaikovsky has been a revelation - he brings out all its raw passion. And Gergiev with the super-virtuoso LSO - well, it's just the perfect combination.

You know why conductors live so long? Because we perspire so much.

The intensity of being in front of all these incredible musicians and tremendous conductors in these elaborate halls can be overwhelming.

I look at composers and conductors, anybody involved in music or writing or art in general; they got more done as they got older. If I can, I'll be one of those people because what I do is my passion.

My whole life, I've been watching conductors. I was 7 the first time I played with a conductor. Seeing the ones that do it well, it's an amazing thing.

I deny that either singers or conductors can "create" or work creatively - this, as I have always said, is a conception that leads to the abyss.

Hover boards, unfortunately, currently violate the laws of physics. Supermagnets exist, but they have to be cooled to near absolute zero, and they are extremely expensive. So Michael J. Fox's hover boards are not possible until we invent room temperature super conductors.

The (photographic) negative is the equivalent of the composers score and the print is the equivalent of the conductors performance.

Conductors' careers are made for the most part with 'Romantic' music. 'Classic' music eliminates the conductor; we do not remember him in it.

So many times, I've seen conductors that, every time they have a thought, they stop the orchestra and say it, and I can see the orchestra rolling their eyes and saying, 'Oh, God, he stopped again.' So there's a technique to rehearsing.

The great actors are the luminous ones. They are the great conductors of the stage.

Today we can establish Sharia law because our nation will acquire well-being only with Islam and Sharia. The Muslim Brothers and the Freedom and Justice Party will be the conductors of these goals.

Carbon nanotubes are amazing because they're really good electrical conductors, yet they are only a few atoms in diameter. You can make transistors out of them in the same way you can with silicon. At Berkeley, we made the narrowest device anybody had ever made. It was basically a single molecule.

This year - a factory of semiconductors. Next year - a factory of whole conductors!

Many, many years ago, I was one of the few conductors who talked to the audience and now a lot of classical conductors have figured it out... otherwise, you just get the back of someone's head playing music you could hear on a CD. It's not enough anymore.

They gave me four weeks, and I asked if the first week could be just music with the two main conductors. So, the conductors came over to my home, and we worked in the music room, and I learned my two little songs.

Conductors are performers.

If I was running a British School of classical music I'd employ Tai Chi teachers to help the conductors at the end of their lessons.

Every purely natural object is a conductor of divinity, and we have but to expose ourselves in a clean condition to any of these conductors, to be fed and nourished by them. Only in this way can we procure our daily spirit bread.

A good example of how it must have been is today's world of conducting, which is still utterly dominated by men, and the prejudice the few female conductors have to battle even today is astounding.

Technique is communication: the two words are synonymous in conductors.

You hear the same work by different orchestras, different conductors, violinists, pianists, singers, and slowly, the work reveals itself and begins to live deeper in you.

Conducting, I tried it once off the cuff, and quickly realized there were subtle aspects that I was missing. There is a lot more to it that I was able to grasp simply by watching conductors.

It is becoming increasingly difficult to obtain the services of first-class conductors. They are sick and tired of dealing with singers, as I am.

Directors have a tendency to use their hands like orchestra conductors. They don't realize that the actor is looking at their faces, anyway.

I was the conductor of the Underground Railroad for eight years, and I can say what most conductors can't say; I never ran my train off the track and I never lost a passenger.

Conductors make too much fuss about conductors! Humility and hard work are virtues. We're nothing without our musicians.

I was different from most young conductors today.

Conductors do not know how the oboe does its work, but they know what the oboe should contribute.

Conductors must give unmistakable and suggestive signals to the orchestra - not choreography to the audience.

Few of us boggle - though we should - at the fact that Louis Armstrong sang and played trumpet with similar panache, or that Leonard Bernstein and Benjamin Britten were equally adept as composers, conductors and pianists.