Some of the greatest creative geniuses can be difficult. It's possible to be a first-class musician and a fifth-class human being—think of Wagner. I'm tempted to wonder whether all art is amoral until I think of Bach.

When conductors behave badly, it's often attributed to “a big ego.” I was at a party where the soprano Elisabeth Schwarzkopf told a Toscanini story. She and her husband, Walter Legge (of EMI Records), were in Milan recording Verdi's Requiem with the conductor Victor de Sabata. When they heard that their friend Toscanini was in town, they went to visit him. He was delighted to see them and asked what brought them to Italy. “Making a record of the Verdi Requiem.” “And who is conducting?” “Maestro de Sabata.” Toscanini suddenly flew into a rage, started throwing things around the room, and had to be restrained by his wife. He genuinely believed that he did a better job than de Sabata, in whose hands his beloved Verdi Requiem would be mangled to death. A blinkered conviction about being “right” was part of his powerful communication with orchestras and audiences. Every conductor needs this conviction while he's performing, but this outburst away from the podium doesn't tally with the touching humility Toscanini normally displayed when he talked about his work. He saw himself as the servant and representative of the composer, striving and often fighting to achieve the vision contained in the printed page.