When Arturo Toscanini announced that this season would be his last with the Philharmonic-Symphony, every music-loving New Yorker realized that the proud Manhattan orchestra was face-to-face with a perilous crisis. Toscanini was regarded as a musical god, incomparable and unapproachable. No ordinary successor could begin to fill his boots. The Philharmonic directors sat through many a worried session, finally offered the post to Germany's Wilhelm Furtwangler who relinquished it when he heard of the stormy protests against his Nazi connections. The hunt went on until last week when five conductors were announced for...
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