The conductor's stand is not a continent of power, but rather an island of solitude.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
Solitude is independence.
Solitude is un-American.
I don't feel that the conductor has real power. The orchestra has the power, and every member of it knows instantaneously if you're just beating time.
The conductor's gift does not always go hand in hand with that of composition; indeed, the union is found much more seldom than is popularly believed.
The conductor is the artistic leader and sometimes cultural arbiter of his or her community. It is their leadership that is looked to and should anything go wrong, they are the persons taking most of the heat.
Australia is properly speaking an island, but it is so much larger than every other island on the face of the globe, that it is classed as a continent in order to convey to the mind a just idea of its magnitude.
Solitude has its own very strange beauty to it.
The principal task of a conductor is not to put himself in evidence but to disappear behind his functions as much as possible. We are pilots, not servants.
Well, the United States is a Pacific power. And we have always had a presence in the Pacific.
No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent.