I’m not saying they’re not. I’m saying that in the minds of the public, the musicians are the ones doing all the work, so there’s no reason on earth for the conductor to look like he’s just finished a triathlon. It makes him seem like a phony, and brings everything he’s doing into doubt. Hence the questions, such as the one posed by the OP.
Is this the conductor thread? Or the deodorant thread?
No reason it can’t be both. Wouldn’t it save space on the SDMB if every two adjacent threads were combined?
My wife is a HS band director, and I’ve played percussion for 17 years, so I know what it’s like on the ‘being conducted’ part. Watching my wife and talking to her, plus observing the directors I’ve had…let me tell you:
It’s a LOT harder than it looks. Most people with rhythm can learn to conduct a 4 beat phrase with their hands, but getting the sections to balance, controlling the tempo the way you want it, etc, plus the skill in rehearsing to get exactly what you want out of a piece…it’s very, very hard. Great conductors earn their keep, let me tell you.
My freshman year in high school, my band director decided on a whim during our concert to take a piece (I think it was the Alsace-Lorraine movement of Milhaud’s Suite Française) about twice as fast as we had ever rehearsed it, just to make us screw up and give him a reason to yell at us the next day in class. We ended up having to stop halfway through and start over because it was falling apart (this is during a concert, remember), and it made me cry.
You mean like making the beat really, reeeaaally obvious, right?
(Just kidding. I can say that because I am a singer. Actually, I can think of other hand gestures that the conductor might want to give to a prima donna. 
)
I have two conductor stories.
Middle school band. We’re playing the “Hungarian Dance #5”. You know, “Ba, ba-ba, ba-ba, ba-da-ba”
We played it about 50 beats a minute. Painfully, excruciatingly slow. The director seemed to thing this was about right. We stayed silent for a while but, even as timid, musically-uneducated middle school students, we could tell this wasn’t right. As we played it, it wasn’t a dance, it was a dirge.
One time, in his frustration over us commenting on the speed, he jacked it up to about 130 beats/min - that’ll show us. We kept right up - the piece isn’t that hard - and it was finally a fun, good piece of music.
We never did it again. We performed the dirge version for our school and parents.
The other story. High school. We’re playing something pretty tough, Tchaikovsky’s fourth Symphony maybe? Anyway, we’re struggling along as usual, trying to get all the accidentals right. The local University professor comes in as a guest conductor for this rehearsal, since his University symphony is playing the same piece.
We want to show off, of course, but something about his directing kicked us up two notches - more than just “showing off” could account for. We were tighter and more controlled than we ever were under our high school director. It was weird but I finally understood what a good conductor was capable of doing. They control far more than the tempo & dynamics. Their communication with the players can control, it seems, even the players’ abilities.
I’ve never played team sports but I suspect a good coach can do the same for athletes.
Anyway, the message is that a conductor’s skills can make a huuuugge difference in a performance.
I’m sorry I never posted in this thread after, but rest assured I read every post. I just had no more to add! Thanks, tdn for your unique perspective, and thanks everyone else for all the info. Even the jokesters…the Dope has some of the best ones.
I only came back into this thread to say I am currently watching Leonard Bernstein’s Candided opera and wow, what a laugh riot! I recommend this for sure - absolutely fall-down funny, and lots of orchestra/conductor interaction.
I really admire this conductor. This particular one is so into it…you can see how passionate she is, and yet she’s having so much fun. And it’s really clear how she defines the tone of the music and the style of it, and how she keeps everyone pulling together.
Actually, the engineer drives the train. The conductor punches the tickets.
I’ll stick my conductor story in…
I was in my high school band when the local university conductor came to visit us. Turns out he was friends with our high-school conductor and both the university and our high school were playing the same complex piece.
The university conductor directed us once through the piece. You can make an argument that we were really on our toes trying to impress the guy but I think it was the conducting. We played that piece better than we ever had before, both technically & musically.
I was astounded and never until that point realized what a difference a conductor can make in the performance.
Remember that stage musicians in the Pit cannot see what is happening on the stage. Ony the conductor can, and he (or she) has to coordinate their playing to what the actors are doing.
Both Charles Schultz and Robert Fulghum have written about their experiences conducting professional orchestras. It’s not as easy as it looks.
I’ll stick my conductor story in…
I was in my high school band when the local university conductor came to visit us. Turns out he was friends with our high-school conductor and both the university and our high school were playing the same complex piece.
The university conductor directed us once through the piece. You can make an argument that we were really on our toes trying to impress the guy but I think it was the conducting. We played that piece better than we ever had before, both technically & musically.
I was astounded and never until that point realized what a difference a conductor can make in the performance.
Whoa - double post, 30 min apart. That’s what happens when you press the “Retry” button on a “dead” window…
Um… actually a triple post, 9 and a half months apart. 
I played the bassoon in my high school orchestra. At one point during the year, the music department “went on tour” - traveling and playing concerts at other high schools in different cities.
The audience at one particular school was extremely rude. We were performing the William Tell Overture. As we played through the slow, quiet, 3/4 portion of the piece, the students in the bleachers, clearly bored, chattered away with each other, paying no attention to the performance. They were loud enough that we in the orchestra could hear them over the music. We musicians were getting irritated, but the conductor was getting angry. His face was turning red, and we could see him grinding his teeth. Did he stop the music and chastise the audience?
No. He did better than that.
As the slow, quiet portion of the composition was coming to a close, he made eye contact with everybody in the orchestra, one by one, to make sure we were all looking at him. When he had everybody’s attention, still waving his baton, he held his free hand in front of his chest, where the audience could not see it. He made a fist. He made a short, quick, downward jerking motion that made it clear what he wanted us to do.
We hit the “Lone Ranger” section as hard as we possibly could. We played it louder than any orchestra in history.
BOMP! BUDDA-BOMP! BUDDA-BOMP-BOMP-BOMP-BOMP-BOMP-BOMP-BOMP-BOMP-BOMP-BOMP-BOMP-BOMP …
It was very rewarding seeing that entire audience jump three feet out of their seats.
On a small scale, sure, particularly if the same program is being performed on several occasions. Perhaps for example a rallentando (gradual slowing down) might be faster or slower if the conductor is so moved, and so forth . . . but within reason. It’s very rare for a conductor to radically deviate from what has been established in rehearsal.
In college, I sang in a very good choir, the Maryland Camerata. We had a very fine and prestigious conductor, were Artists-in-Residence at the National Gallery of Art in DC, etc etc.
We were on tour in Europe and performed one night in Rotenburg, Germany, must’ve been in '88 or '89. It was an exceptional performance and an exceptionally receptive audience–they were visibly moved to tears more than once.
Close to the end of the concert, inspired by the electricity of the evening, our conductor began the next piece and completely threw out the book and improvised in the moment. Everything was different: he sustained us through phrases where we usually paused, he called for hush where we rehearsed loud, we sped up and slowed down at his whim, and everybody was right there with him.
Afterwards, the audience clapped and stomped their feet for five minutes straight. It was one of the peak experiences of my musical career.
Smartass trumpeteer and kazoo player jumping in here to mention how Conductors get their jobs:
They lose one of their drumsticks
But yeah, as for what abilities a conductor has, the Assistant Band Director at my high school my junior year managed to effectively kill my ambition for music. He was something of an arrogant ass, more interested in pointing out that he had a masters degree from SMU (as if any of us really cared) than he was in actually helping us improve anything.
So my senior year, I double-enrolled in Junior ROTC instead.
What’s the difference between a bull and a symphony orchestra?
The bull has the horns in the front and the asshole in the back.
Scarlett, former flautist
whose friend the HS band director loves this joke
How can you tell if a flute player is at your door?
She can’t find her key.