Conductors who can rouse both their musicians and their audiences to frenzied enthusiasm are born, not made. Few seem to be born in the U.S.* But last week in Manhattan's Town Hall one budding U.S.-born conductor had Manhattan's surliest critics holding their breaths with excitement. He was an earnest-looking, square-faced, 26-year-old Californian, Robert Shaw, and he was conducting a hastily trained chorus of 170-odd singers in a program of modern music by Manhattan's William Schuman.
The critics were excited not so much by Conductor Shaw's musicianship as by the way he held the...
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