As they gathered in Carnegie Hall's orchestra room before the Sunday evening broadcast, members of the NBC Symphony seemed to sense what was coming. When the door opened, one of the men hissed for quiet and another called "Silenzio!" The musicians watched tensely as their 87-year-old conductor passed through the silence, leaning heavily on the arm of his son. Out in the hall, many of the audience who had come to witness the season's last Toscanini concert also guessed that it might be Arturo Toscanini's last stand with the NBC—and perhaps with any...
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