Quotes About Conducting

It's been very exciting for me to start directing and conducting, exploring the symphonic repertoire, which I've always loved.

Never look encouragingly at the brass, except with a short glance to give an important cue.

If I cannot sing a work, I cannot conduct it.

He helped Walter Legge underwrite the creation of the Philharmonia Orchestra, and conducted its premiere concert on 25 October, 1945. Later, Legge raised the matter of Beecham's fee, to which he replied: "The privilege of directing this magnificent consort of artists is such that my pleasure would be diminished if I accepted a fee. I would, however, gladly accept a decent cigar"

Without a full understanding of the harm caused by war, it is impossible to understand the most profitable way of conducting it

Why do you always insist on playing while I'm trying to conduct?

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

Well, I started conducting kind of by accident. I wanted to give myself a special birthday present for my fortieth birthday, and I was living in San Francisco at the time and I started attending some of the concerts and then simply dropping hints.

I have a degree in music, yeah, from the University of Montana. I studied voice and composition and conducting and all that.

The real art of conducting consists in transitions.

Conducting is more difficult than playing a single instrument. You have to know the culture, to know the score, and to project what you want to hear. Some conductors are well prepared but cannot transmit their ideas to an orchestra, and others are good communicators but have nothing to transmit because they are not absorbed enough in the score.

In truth, I became a conductor because deep down I wanted to conduct Brahmss four symphonies and Richard Strausss tone poems.

Conducting has more to do with singing and breathing than with piano-playing.

I love orchestrating music and conducting and being on Broadway.

In 1990, Paul Smith and I decided that conducting polymers as materials had developed to a level of maturity that commercial products were possible. With this as a goal, we founded UNLAX Corporation.

When I started, I'd never had a conducting lesson in my life; I could just do it.

My worst and best qualities are rashness: the good part of it is due to youth, which is, of course, why I'm not a great conductor.

I love conducting. What I'm tired of is music administration. I don't want that. I just want to make music.

There will have to be times when I'm not conducting because I'm composing. I haven't solved that problem, and perhaps I never will.

I studied film scoring and orchestration and conducting and arranging in my twenties, and I scored a lot of television shows and other things.

If you put four different people on a podium conducting the same downbeat, you get four different sounds. It's a little mysterious and fascinating. There's so much you can do with motions and body movements besides giving accurate beats.

He was making all kinds of sounds apparently with his mouth, and shaking his head and I thought, gosh, is he trying to stop the orchestra? Is it all wrong? It was just unbelievable.

On this question of war, three things are to be considered. First, the right of declaring it: secondly, the expense of supporting it: thirdly, the mode of conducting it after it is declared.

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.