Svetlanov Conductor Quotes

The most important thing for the conductor is that he or she listens. Her listening will make things sound a certain way. If the conductor listens well, the musicians listen each other better. The conductor can in effect impose a certain kind of listening for everybody. ~ Laurence Equilbey

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

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

You are the conductor of your own success train. ~ William Cranch Bond

Every natural object is a conductor of divinity and only by coming into contact with them ... may we be filled with the Holy Ghost. ~ John Muir

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. ~ Gustavo Dudamel

The brain is a little saline pool that acts as a conductor, and it runs on electricity. ~ Judith Hooper

A conductor should guide rather than command. ~ Riccardo Muti

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

I was the most famous conductor on the Underground Railroad. ~ Harriet Tubman

The conductor of the orchestra doesn't make a sound. His power comes from awakening possibility in others. - Benjamin Zander, conductor and coauthor of The Art of Possibility ~ Malcolm Harkins

From time to time, the Vienna Philharmonic could play without a conductor because they are so good. ~ Bernard Arnault

Somehow, conductor as this superhuman conduit between the masters and the masterpieces and the immortals. ~ Esa-Pekka Salonen

You yourself may not be luminous, but you are a conductor of light. ~ Arthur Conan Doyle

A good conductor ought to be a good chauffeur; the qualities that make the one also make the other. They are concentration, an incessant control of attention, and presence of mind; the conductor only has to add a little sense of music. ~ Sergei Rachmaninoff

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

The whole duty of a conductor is comprised in his ability to indicate the right tempo. ~ Richard Wagner

In America, they have this nauseating habit of calling the conductor 'maestro'. I always slightly gag when the cor anglais player goes, 'Maestro, can I discuss bar 19 with you?' ~ Charles Hazlewood

A conductor can't be too arrogant with an orchestra and try to impose himself too much. ~ Anthony Hopkins

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

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

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

I am somewhat exhausted; I wonder how a battery feels when it pours electricity into a non-conductor? ~ Arthur Conan Doyle

Musical practice is too young an art in America to warrant a search for men with a conductor's gift. ~ Anton Seidl

The drum to which we march reveals the conductor to whom we're listening. ~ Craig D. Lounsbrough

Zeal, the blind conductor of the will. ~ John Dryden

The success of our operas rests most of the time in the hands of the conductor. This person is as necessary as a tenor or a prima donna. ~ Giuseppe Verdi

All the conductor has to do is stand back and try not to get in the way. Mozart is doing all the work. ~ Colin R. Davis

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

I do basically what a conductor does with a baton, except I also play along with the orchestra. So I have to juggle the roles of playing the concertmaster; sometimes I drop the violin and wave my arms. ~ Joshua Bell

Perhaps the chief requirement of [the conductor] is that he be humble before the composer; that he never interpose himself between the music and the audience; that all his efforts, however strenuous or glamorous, be made in the service of the composer's meaning - the music itself, which, after all, is the whole reason for the conductor's existence. ~ Leonard Bernstein

The conductor has the advantage of not seeing the audience. ~ Andre Kostelanetz

I mean, 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. ~ Joshua Bell

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

Being a director or a conductor is a balance of many things. And to do it right is a very difficult tightrope to walk. I've come to the conclusion that there's really no way to be one hundred percent popular as conductor. ~ Joshua Bell

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. ~ Josh Radnor

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

We should think of the church as an orchestra in which the different churches play on different instruments while a Divine Conductor calls the tune. ~ William Ralph Inge

You stand exactly in the middle, poised between heaven and earth, a human conductor for the energy that seeks to flow between these two polarities. ~ Margot Anand

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

The symphony orchestra had played poorly, so the conductor was in a bad mood. That night he beat his wife
because the music hadn't been beautiful enough. ~ George Carlin

You know as I started as a shy young conductor, I always wanted to cooperate. To build up the musicians. To help them to be better than without a conductor. And sometimes young talented musicians have to be encouraged. ~ Kurt Masur

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

One of my central maxims is how a major part of what a conductor tries to do is get a large group of people to agree on where "now" actually is. ~ Michael Tilson Thomas

We are aware that the conductor is not really making the music, it is making him
if he is relaxed, open and attuned, then the invisible will take possession of him; through him, it will reach us. ~ Peter Brook

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. ~ Sharon Salzberg

When I'm having a rehearsal and there are new guys who come in to try out for the job, I always let my conductor rehearse them. Because I don't want the guy to get bent out of shape, because I walk in. ~ Ray Charles

In getting good results team leaders become conductor rather than driver, enabling others to play the right music, not by hands-on domination of all decisions and execution, but by providing inspiration, motivation and stimulus. ~ Robert Heller

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

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. ~ Harriet Tubman

I urge pupils when studying a work and in order to master its most important aspic, the rhythmic structure, or the ordering of the time process, to do just what a conductor does with the score: to place music on the desk and to conduct the work from beginning to end as if it were played by someone else, an imaginary pianist with the conductor trying to impress him with his will, his tempo first of all, plus all the details of his performance. ~ Heinrich Neuhaus

En voiture, Monsieur,' said the Wagon Lit conductor. ~ Agatha Christie

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. ~ Ian Rankin

He's the lightning, and I am simply a conductor. We were always bound to converge. ~ A. Zavarelli

The conductor was so totally without expression he could have pulled off a bank robbery without covering his face. ~ Haruki Murakami

The carpenter, lab technician, and conductor are all craftsmen because they are dedicated to good work for its own sake. ~ Richard Sennett

Love is the foundation, the mechanism and the conductor of life. ~ Daniel Marques

An air of infinite reluctance M. Poirot climbed aboard the train. The conductor climbed after him. ~ Agatha Christie

A dean is the conductor of an orchestra made up entirely of composers. ~ Mark William Roche

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

I played with the best
conductors of the world. ~ Mstislav Rostropovich

Ah, Watson," said Ty. "You may not yourself be luminous, but you are an extraordinary conductor of light. ~ Cassandra Clare

You are the composer and conductor and thus decide what key of life to live. I choose major over minor whenever I can. ~ Susan Reynolds

Pile the bodies high at Austerlitz and Waterloo.
Shovel them under and let me work
I am the grass; I cover all.
And pile them high at Gettysburg
And pile them high at Ypres and Verdun.
Shovel them under and let me work.
Two years, ten years, and the passengers ask the conductor:
What place is this?
Where are we now?
I am the grass.
Let me work. ~ Carl Sandburg

[To the patronizing train conductor who had twice said, 'Auntie, give me your ticket':] Which of my sister's sons are you? ~ Mary McLeod Bethune

In fact, these terms devised by Franklin are the ones we still use today, along with other neologisms that he coined to describe his findings: battery, charged, neutral, condense, and conductor. ~ Walter Isaacson

I saw a street car conductor today with one brown eye and one blue. Wouldn't he make a nice villain for a detective story? ~ Jean Webster

...my life is the train wreck. You, my dear, are the conductor on the Hot Mess Express ~ B.L. Berry

Suddenly Paris fashion-that bellwether for the French mind-had to be à l'Amérique: tailors manufactured "insurgent coats" and "lightning-conductor dresses" (in honor of Ben Franklin, with two wires hanging to the ground). ~ Tom Reiss

The conductor was eating a young ladies' cinema nibble with a rigid, humourless expression, as though it was the doorstop or hunk of sausage that would have accorded with his personality. ~ Joseph Roth

A conductor should reconcile himself to the realization that regardless of his approach or temperament the eventual result is the same-the orchestra will hate him. ~ Oscar Levant

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. ~ Joshua Bell

I have a big problem with conductors who gesture a lot. ~ James Levine

There's nothing quite like a real ... train conductor to add color to a quotidian commute ~ Anita Diament

He was making music - Howells, Finzi, Holst - so you could see the sounds in the serried air.
Serried. Then just as suddenly empty when his sound-proof right hand closed off the notes. ~ Craig Raine

I was different from most young conductors today. ~ Kurt Masur

There was this kind of mildly annoying mythology about conductor Like biker should riding a Harley-Davidson on an LP cover, and wearing a sort of a leather suit. ~ Esa-Pekka Salonen

What love is to the heart, appetite is to the stomach. The stomach is the conductor that leads and livens up the great orchestra of our emotions. ~ Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

The essential conditions of everything you do must be choice, love, passion. ~ Nadia Boulanger

[As a conductor] there has to be, between me and the orchestra, an unshakable bond of trust, born out of mutual respect, through which we can spin a musical narrative that we all believe in. ~ Charles Hazlewood

Belief conducts the symphony of our thoughts.
While moments dance to that symphony.
Want better moments?
Choose to be a better conductor. ~ Charles F. Glassman

As a conductor I find the hardest tasks are to listen to the instinct of a musician and to hear the music behind the notes. ~ Edward Gardner

The most important thing to do is really listen. ~ Itzhak Perlman

Baton technique is to a conductor what fingers are to a pianist. ~ Igor Markevitch

The conductor is a peculiar person. He turns his back on his friends in the audience, shakes a stick at his players in the orchestra, and then wonders why nobody loves him. ~ Victor Borge

It's no more normal to be a bank-manager or a bus-conductor, than to be Baudelaire or Genghis Khan,' Moreland had once remarked. 'It just happens there are more of the former types. ~ Anthony Powell

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. ~ Chet Huntley

[A conductor's] happiness does not come from only his own story and his joy of the music. The joy is about enabling other people's stories to be heard at the same time. ~ Itay Talgam

[On being asked how it felt to be the first female conductor of the Boston Symphony:] I've been a woman for a little more than fifty years, and I've gotten over my original astonishment. ~ Nadia Boulanger

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. ~ Joshua Bell

The English may not like music, but they absolutely love the noise it makes. ~ Thomas Beecham

I told him what I thought and he suddenly leapt into the air with joy, like a child: 'Also, wirklich, gut?' [So it was really good?]. Such a titan, and so unsure of himself. ~ Sviatoslav Richter

Sympathy wanting, all is wanting; its personal magnetism is the conductor of the sacred spark that lights our atoms, puts us m human communion, and gives us to company, conversation, and ourselves. ~ Amos Bronson Alcott

There's a metal train that a mile long and at the very back end a lightning bolt struck her. How long til it reaches and kills the driver, provided that he's a good conductor? ~ Bo Burnham

(From Boulez, an authorized biography by Joan Peyser)
At the chapel door he [a priest associated with a school Boulez attended] asked me if what he had been told was true: that Boulez no longer believed in God. I said it was ... ~ Pierre Boulez

I want to introduce you to Jay, a 'bus-conductor and an idealist. She is not the heroine, but the most constantly apparent woman in this book. I cannot introduce you to a heroine because I have never met one. ~ Stella Benson

Ticket and passport. We're crossing the border."
"Oh. Sorry." Dan handed the conductor his ticket.
"Grazie."
"De nada," Dan said.
"That's Spanish," Amy whispered.
"No, it's whatever," Dan said. "I'm too tired to think. ~ Jude Watson

Welcome to the Knight Bus, emergency transport for the stranded witch or wizard. Just stick out your wand hand, step on board, and we can take you anywhere you want to go. My name is Stan Shunpike, and I will be your conductor this eve - ~ J.K. Rowling

Suffering was not a punishment from beyond or a malevolent infestation of the soul. Like the earth turning on its axis or energy passing through a conductor, it was a part of the natural world, to be studied, understood, and, when possible, managed. ~ Joshua Wolf Shenk

In this symphony that is my life, God is not content to be a member of the audience or stage crew. He is not even content to be the conductor. He wants to be the composer. ~ Brad Wilcox