The Frederick Symphony Orchestra has drawn inspiration from political leaders, songwriters, actors, poets, philosophers, and journalists. Now, it’s time to hear why classical music is so important from those who help make it happen on stage.

The FSO is listing the greatest and most memorable quotes from conductors around the world who span generations of classical music and orchestral stage presence:

• “A painter paints his pictures on canvas, but musicians paint their pictures on silence. We provide the music, and you provide the silence.”
  ~Leopold Stokowski, former music director of the Philadelphia Orchestra and founder of the Hollywood Bowl Symphony and the American Symphony orchestras

• “If there are discords, we must always play them as beautifully as we know how. A discord is not an excuse for ugly music-making, for playing out of tune.”
  ~Herbert von Karajan, former principal conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic in Germany

• “If you want to please only the critics, don’t play too loud, too soft, too fast and too slow.”
  ~Arturo Toscanini, former music director of the Metropolitan Opera, the New York Philharmonic (NYP), and NBC Symphony Orchestra

• “I grew up in an era where an orchestra was like a treasure chest.”
  ~James Levine, former music director of the Metropolitan Opera and the Boston Symphony Orchestra (BSO)

• “The key to the mystery of a great artist is that for reasons unknown, he will give away his energies and his life just to make sure that one note follows another…and leaves us with the feeling that something is right in the world.”
  ~Leonard Bernstein, former music director of the NYP and film composer of Peter Pan, West Side Story, and Candide

• “Music is meaningless noise unless it touches a receiving mind.”
  ~Paul Hindemith, former deputy leader of the Frankfurt Opera Orchestra in Germany

• “All the conductor has to do is stand back and try not to get in the way. Mozart is doing all the work.”
  ~Sir Colin David, former conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra (LSO) and the Royal Opera House in the United Kingdom and the Dresden Staatskapelle in Belgium

• “The conductor of an orchestra doesn’t make a sound. He depends, for his power, on his ability to make other people powerful.”
  ~Benjamin Zander, founder and musical director of the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra and the Boston Philharmonic Youth Orchestra

• “It’s not that people don’t like classical music. It’s that they have the chance to understand and to experience it.”
  ~Gustavo Dudamel, music director of the Orquesta Sinfónica Simón Bolívar in Venezuela and the Los Angeles Philharmonic

• “So long as the human spirit thrives on this planet, music in some living form will accompany and sustain it.”
  ~Aaron Copland, former director of the NYP and composer

• “The function of music is to release us from the tyranny of conscious thought.”
  ~Thomas Beecham, Britain’s first international conductor and former associate of the London Philharmonic and Royal Philharmonic orchestras

• “Many people learn how to talk, but they don’t learn how to listen. Listening to one another is an important thing in life. And music tells us how to do that.”
  ~Claudio Abbado, former principal conductor of the LSO, principal guest conductor of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra (CSO), and music director of the Vienna State Opera in Austria

• “You know why conductors live so long? Because we perspire so much.”
  ~John Barbirolli, former conductor of the Hallé Orchestra in England, chief conductor of the Houston Symphony, and music director of the NYP

• “Every great work of art has two faces, one toward its own time and one toward the future, toward eternity.”
  ~Daniel Barenboim, general music director of the Berlin State Opera in Germany and former music director of the CSO and the Orchestre de Paris in France

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