The Music of Gesture by Greg Sandow
What conductors actually do is something of a mystery even to many regular classical listeners. Perhaps it's a mystery to symphony performers as well, because conductors sometimes create a communicative bond that is so implicit that no one can articulate how it works. Sandow reviews two new videos that capture some conductors at their best but as he points out, they fail to show the marvellous intuition they also show in rehearsals. Sandow's also has some good insights in this article on Jansons and Eschenbach.