Leonard Slatkin

“The public will always find its way to something that is spelled out, quite frankly, and which has a little bit of sass.”

“Every orchestra is different. You can't just stand up there and do the same things for everybody.”

“You don't just learn a score. You live with it.”

“In the final analysis, it's not what you start, it's what you finish.”

“Conducting is a strange thing. You're in a place where you can't make a sound.”

“It's the conductor's job to make the orchestra want to play.”

“You have to be a bit of a dictator. You have to be a bit of a psychologist. You have to be a bit of a father figure.”

“I am not afraid to take a work that is considered second-rate and try to make it sound first-rate. I have done that many times.”

“The job of the conductor is to show how this music is played... not what is played, but how it is played.”

“What I try to do is to get the musicians to express what they have inside.”

“For a conductor, you have to be able to hear what is not there.”