"As conductor, what I was doing was I was conducting Sam and then imagining the voices later on, so I was singing all of it through in my head, trying to imagine where is the push, where is the pull."
"...conducting is a consummate form of communication... it's not just about what the left hand does and how it might shape various parts or aspects of Any Given Symphony... once you have been working with a group of people... you have a shorthand..."
"I was conducting an orchestra of millions."
"Conducting is all about separating your hands so that you can create two different worlds."
"...once conducted a piece with just his face..."
"So that's basically what a conductor does. He comes and he says, you know, violins, I want you to, like, put your, your bows just a little bit more like this."
"He was conducting the music in his head, he was giving the tempo to the music, amazing."
"It's a great great performance by a great Mahler conductor."
"They personalize interpretations you can often tell who's conducting without even knowing the name of the conductor."
"Bernstein was one of the most faithful interpreters you will ever encounter if you actually follow a score and see what he does."
"What a good conductor Levine was."
"But my God was he a good Brahms conductor."
"Zell and Cleveland and whose finale of the Jupiter Symphony is one of the great conducting exhibitions of clarity and balance and exquisite taste allied to energy and vigor and intensity, I mean it's just, it's just like you know, wow, just unbelievably amazing."
"Conducting has always been one of my favorite elements of any style of music."
"Mickey's coming out, he's doing some conducting, and then the first time the actual horns hit in the score, it's accompanied by water going up and lights."
"Every performance was different to the other one; his imagination, his ability to really use both hands, the independence of the right and the left, giving us everything that was possible for every instrument."
"He understood how to ignite the stillness in a way that no other conductor ever even came close to."
"And then he just pauses a second before coming back down, and just that pause is an example of what a great conductor does."
"When he was on the podium conducting, it was as if he himself had composed the pieces that he was directing with his baton."
"Bernstein's conducting has a great sense of drama and scale."
"The interesting thing about this recording is these both feature Leonard Bernstein himself playing the piano concerto while conducting from the piano."
"Bernstein was always a very good Beethoven conductor."
"Conducting is a metaphor for leadership."
"Nikki Jaroff could sing, and Devoto can conduct very, very well."
"Listen to how a conductor will conduct through moments of sloppiness on the first take or stop suddenly for something they seemingly know won't be cleared in a second take."
"I conduct Beethoven symphonies and things just from body language."
"I can conduct a whole symphony with just from my wrist."
"Conducting consistently at tempo 50 is actually really hard, anything under tempo 60 is really hard to maintain because it's slower than a second and you tend to rush a little bit, which he didn't do, so kudos to him for conducting marvelously as usual."
"You can just feel the support, encouragement from your back, even though you don't see the audience when you conduct."
"Conducting is a combination of emotion and technique; music is emotion, music is also a series of notes bound together according to a composer's concept."
"That's when you really know when the great conductors are; you can tell the great conductors apart from the okay conductors because the great conductors know what they have to do to pull everybody back together."
"He did so because at last a native-born American had joined the ranks of the conducting elite."
"That's what conductors are for, and they control the whole performance."
"In the middle of the piece, John got up and started conducting."
"Put your choir in a situation to notice you. It's a very good thing to do; they quickly become aware of the importance of watching you while conducting."
"Conducting is not a democratic endeavor, it's a dictatorship."
"When I think about the goal of conducting, I think that primarily it's to be very clear so that your ensemble knows exactly what you're looking for."
"Watch the conductor, and that's what's going to keep us unified."