Score Reading Quotes

Conducting, I tried it once off the cuff, and quickly realized there were subtle aspects that I was missing. There is a lot more to it that I was able to grasp simply by watching conductors.

Conducting has more to do with singing and breathing than with piano-playing.

I was a schooled musician. When I made 'Blue Velvet', I told everyone what to do. I was an arranger. I learned music in school I told the band to play this. I told the guitar to do that.

How good are the best musical imaginations? Can a trained musician, swiftly reading a score tell just how that voicing of dissonant oboes and flutes over the massed strings will sound?

Conducting is way over my head.

Basically speaking, conducting is quite a healthy profession.

I auditioned for 'West Side Story' and got the part of Tony, but wasn't allowed to do it. They needed me to play trumpet. But I was glad, in the end, because I learned a lot about playing that score.

When I started, I'd never had a conducting lesson in my life; I could just do it.

In concertos, I stand up, and I conduct with the bow when I'm not playing. During symphonies, I sit, but sometimes I stop playing to conduct. Being seated in a section allows me to feel more like we're playing chamber music, which is how I like to approach it.

When working with an orchestra, you never spend more than 20 minutes per recording session.

I actually was the accompanist for a couple of the musicals I was in growing up.

I endeavor that all orchestras I conduct sound Central European.

I feel at home in an orchestral score.

I went to study some orchestration stuff because I got so inspired working with all the orchestras.

In symphonic music, when you are conducting, you do the same thing. You are feeling the whole orchestra, thinking ahead so you can prepare for a change.

The most difficult problem in conducting is intonation. You must know what is wrong and how to correct it.

When I'm scoring something like a string quartet, it's all notated music, so it's meticulously written in the score, which is very different than doing things by ear.

I have always studied my parts with the orchestral score and not with the piano reduction.