Top Conductor Quotes
I like to create the music I hear in my interior. As a conductor, you have the ability to squeeze the sounds and interpretation you asked for from 50 to 80 people.
Eberhard Weber
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.
Michael Tilson Thomas
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.
Gunther Schuller
The very first time I was on a car in Atlanta, I saw the conductor - all conductors are white - ask a Negro woman to get up and take a seat farther back in order to make a place for a white man. I have also seen white men requested to leave the Negro section of the car.
Ray Stannard Baker
The awful thing about a conductor becoming geriatric is that you seem to become more desirable, not less.
Neville Marriner
Kurt Masur 
Nicholas Meyer 
Artur Rodzinski All Conductor Quotes
In South America, I heard the 8th Symphony of Beethoven. And the young conductor thought, Beethoven must be heroic. But this is piece which shouldn't be heroic. And this was such a misunderstanding, such a deep misunderstanding.
Kurt Masur 
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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.
Michael Tilson Thomas
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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.
Charles Munch
52% of people like this quote
I always imagined that to bring an orchestra to play together is not enough for a conductor.
Kurt Masur
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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.
Itzhak Perlman
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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.
Ruggiero Ricci
51% of people like this quote
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.
James Levine
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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.
Anton Seidl
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The director is a bit analogous to the conductor of a symphony orchestra. It's a collaborative adventure.
Nicholas Meyer
51% of people like this quote
Popular Conductor Authors
James LevineIgor StravinskyFranz LisztJohn Philip SousaItzhak PerlmanKurt MasurMichael Tilson ThomasNeville MarrinerEberhard WeberHarriet TubmanGunther Schuller
Ray Stannard BakerAnton SeidlRuggiero RicciRiccardo MutiColin R. DavisNicholas MeyerAndre KostelanetzCharles MunchArtur RodzinskiLeon ThereminGoddard Lieberson
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