Leonard Slatkin

“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.”

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

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

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

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

“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.”

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

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

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

“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.”