I admire Tom Ades: he’s a brilliant conductor, and he gets just the right hard, brilliant sound from the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra for Russian music.
A conductor can do wild things which can feel forced, but if you’re directing from within the orchestra, you can’t do that, things have to feel natural.
Increasingly I think of myself as some strange and solitary conductor, introduced to a group of very dynamic musicians who happen to be my characters, and I have no idea how they are going to play together, and I have certainly no idea how I am going to put manners on them.
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.
New York for a long time was a kind of conductor’s graveyard.
I was always pretty decent at fast stick work or doing stuff that seems impressive that’s not really; I was pretty tasteful and had good ideas musically. But I had a terrible sense of tempo, which is like being a blind painter. The conductor would just rip into me, and it lasted for years.
So, first you have to be able to play with a metronome. Then you take your freedom. If you play in an orchestra, you got to watch the conductor, he is like a metronome, but it is more difficult because he can change rhythms.
It’s different for people who have not seen a symphony conductor conduct from a chair. I feel very connected to the orchestra in a way that a conductor sometimes does not feel. I think it’s more visceral.
I prefer it when the conductor follows me. It is more difficult to work with a conductor who does not listen – even if I understand that sometimes it makes sense when one person is ruling everything. But for bel canto, I have to have a conductor who listens and supports me.
Because I have sixty years of being a professional composer, conductor, musician, whatever, and you develop a lot of friendships and you get involved with a lot of sort of long-term commitments and obligations.
My mother was an opera singer and my father is a clarinet player, composer and conductor.
From time to time, the Vienna Philharmonic could play without a conductor because they are so good.
My mother played piano at home; she came from a musical family. Her father, who I never met, was a conductor and composer.
All the conductor has to do is stand back and try not to get in the way. Mozart is doing all the work.
When I was younger, I felt more like a student working with a mentor when I worked with the conductor, but now it feels more like equals.
Bernstein was everywhere – Vienna, London – and everyone admired him. Of course he loved Boston, and he did so many great things at Tanglewood. He was the best example of what a conductor should be.
Born a slave, Harriet Tubman was determined not to remain one. She escaped from her owners in Maryland on the Underground Railroad in 1849 and then fearlessly returned thirteen times to help guide family members and others to freedom as the most famous conductor of the Underground Railroad.
And at the same time, I had my very first concert at the age of 16. I hadn’t heard a symphony orchestra before, and I was so deeply impressed I said I have to be a conductor.
The conductor is the artistic leader and sometimes cultural arbiter of his or her community. It is their leadership that is looked to and should anything go wrong, they are the persons taking most of the heat.
The great secret is that an orchestra can actually play without a conductor at all. Of course, a great conductor will have a concept and will help them play together and unify them. But there are conductors that actually inhibit the players from playing with each other properly.
I conceived of an instrument that would create sound without using any mechanical energy, like the conductor of an orchestra. The orchestra plays mechanically, using mechanical energy; the conductor just moves his hands, and his movements have an effect on the music artistry.
I guess, as a conductor, one goes in and out of fashion. Your career starts with a bang, everyone thinks you’re wonderful, and then with middle age, something happens and you go into the wilderness.
Great cataclysmic things can go by and neither the orchestra nor the conductor are under the delusion that whether they make this or that gesture is going to be the deciding factor in how it comes out.
Reinvention is the biggest gift I’ve been given. I’ve gone from graffiti artist to jewellery maker, urban musician to conductor.
When you are the host, you have to take the party into your hands like a conductor.
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.
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.
When I first was conducting as guest conductor in Europe 25 years ago, I would propose doing American pieces and grudgingly it would be accepted from time to time.
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