Top 80 Conductor Quotes

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

I didn’t have traditional stage fright. If there was 500 people in the audience or three people in the audience, it didn’t really make a difference. What made a difference was the conductor. Everything that I was scared about as a drummer was him. It was his face. It was whether or not he’d approve of my playing.

I don’t feel that the conductor has real power. The orchestra has the power, and every member of it knows instantaneously if you’re just beating time.

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.

I might be like a conductor, or I collect the stuff together and I do a lot of my own writing. But what is a pleasure is the whole creative thing in which we’re all excavating and trying to find something.

It’s a dream to be its conductor. Sometimes I think, ‘My God, I can’t believe it.’ It’s a dream which came true.

Monet was like a conductor. He painted with quite a straight arm and used bold strokes.

What appeals to me about an American music directorship is the involvement of the conductor with the orchestra and the community. I think that’s a fantastic thing. In Europe, being principal conductor means merely that you’re the person who does most of the concerts. For me, that simply isn’t enough.

Haute couture is like an orchestra, for which only Balenciaga is the conductor. The rest of us are just musicians, following the directions he gives us.

It is so powerful when we can leave behind our ordinary identities, no longer think of ourselves primarily as a conductor, or writer, or salesclerk, and go to a supportive environment to deeply immerse in meditation practice.

In high school, we had a really great jazz program that I finally was able to be a part of. They only wanted instrumentalists; they didn’t want any singers. But I made my way in, and I remember the conductor of the band wrote a lot of arrangements and asked me what I wanted to sing.

The awful thing about a conductor becoming geriatric is that you seem to become more desirable, not less.

When I was young I wanted to be a bus driver, because my grandad was a conductor on the Routemasters.

In truth, I became a conductor because deep down I wanted to conduct Brahms’s four symphonies and Richard Strauss’s tone poems.

It seems always to have been difficult to have been a New York Philharmonic conductor because of the nature of New York. We are in direct competition with the great orchestras in the world who come to play in our hall or in Carnegie, and we are constantly compared. I think that ‘s a good thing.

Why is the sky blue? Why is the grass green? Why is metal a conductor of electricity, and wood is not, but you’re more likely to be struck by lightning when standing under a tree? These are questions that require science to answer.

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.

I always imagined that to bring an orchestra to play together is not enough for a conductor.

The conductor’s gift does not always go hand in hand with that of composition; indeed, the union is found much more seldom than is popularly believed.

You have a great result if the orchestra trusts the conductor, and the conductor trusts the orchestra.

A lot of people think the orchestra is playing and the conductor doesn’t do very much, but the conductor’s the person that gives shape to the music, gets the phrasing, and if he has really fine musicians in solo spots, the question is does he try to help them phrase, or does he let them go?

I was at La Fenice opera house back in 1991 with friends, and we started talking about a conductor whom none of us liked. Somehow there was an escalation, and we started talking about how to kill him, where to kill him. This struck me as a good idea for a book.

For me, the conductor is a person who interprets along with me, and we interpret things together.

The conductor must breathe life into the score. It is you and you alone who must expose it to the understanding, reveal the hidden jewel to the sun at the most flattering angles.

Acting is just playing the violin in an orchestra. Directing is being the conductor.

Any conductor who tells you that if he is approached for the directorship of the Chicago Symphony that he’s not interested in it, you know perfectly well he’s lying.

I started taking piano lessons when I was about 5, and there was always a lot of music in my family: my parents both play instruments, my grandparents were classical violinists, and my grandfather was actually a music professor and a conductor.

And if you are strong enough, then you can grow as a conductor more and more.

My parents met in music school, and my father was a music professor and conductor. Growing up, we always had classical and contemporary music playing.

SoftBank is not a specialist on any instrument. We did not invent any instrument. Not the best player. But we would like to be a conductor of this information revolution.

I find little in the works of Beethoven, Berlioz, Wagner and others when they are led by a conductor who functions like a windmill.

I had a year at 3 when I wanted to be a conductor in the opera.

Only when every one of us and every nation learns the secret of love for all mankind will the world become a great orchestra, following the beat of the Greatest Conductor of all.

The conductor has the advantage of not seeing the audience.

I didn’t have traditional stage fright. If there was 500 people in the audience or three people in the audience, it didn’t really make a difference. What made a difference was the conductor. Everything that I was scared about as a drummer was him.

That was the ultimate high, playing live. You feel like the Pied Piper, or a conductor, knowing how to take an audience up or bring them down.

I don’t like to hurry. I’m not a conductor of the fast, fiery romantic type. I prefer Bruckner, with the sincerity of his musical language and the huge time spans in which his ideas develop, to Mahler, with his hysteria and self-indulgence.

The principal task of a conductor is not to put himself in evidence but to disappear behind his functions as much as possible. We are pilots, not servants.

I have three siblings. My sister makes music. My older brother is a classical conductor, and my younger brother is a mixing engineer.

Being a conductor is kind of a hybrid profession because most fundamentally, it is being someone who is a coach, a trainer, an editor, a director.

I took the first James Kelman novel, ‘The Bus Conductor Hines’, home to my dad. I thought, ‘My dad will like this; it’s written in Scots.’ But my dad said: ‘I can’t read that.’ He was reading James Bond and John le Carre. That was part of what attracted me to crime – the idea of getting a wide audience.

All around the world, leaders are gaining more power. That’s what this pandemic demands: a coordinated whole-of-nation approach with a powerful conductor at its center.

If you ever go to a music session, you’ll notice that the musicians can sit down and start playing right away, and everyone knows what to do. Of course they’re reading it, but the conductor can tweak little things, and you can take that back to directing motion pictures.

I think it’s a very important collaboration between the conductor and the orchestra – especially when the conductor is one more member of the orchestra in the way that you are leading, but also respecting, feeling and building the same way for all the players to understand the music.

I can’t even touch another conductor’s baton. The center of gravity, the feel of the handle, puts me totally off.

My parents met in music school and my father was a music professor and conductor. Growing up, we always had classical and contemporary music playing. There was a lot of Mozart and the Beatles.

The orchestra confides in me about their music director or their conductor, and I’ve never seen a conductor that’s been liked by everyone.

I’m a conductor of revivals. The only minister in the whole package. Little Richard, the evangelist.

I never desperately wanted to be a jazz drummer. If anything, I was motivated a lot by fear. Fear of the conductor, fear of the future.

I’m a little less hungry as an actor than I used to be. When you’re a director, you’re the conductor of the orchestra, and when you’re an actor, you’re playing the violin. There’s a thrill to each of them, but as the conductor, you get the fuller sound.

The director is a bit analogous to the conductor of a symphony orchestra. It’s a collaborative adventure.

A great conductor is an alchemical force: someone who can absorb the historical weight of a famous melody, the expectations of an audience, and the mercurial brilliance of a host of musicians, and shape them all to his or her interpretative ends.