Conductor Leonard Bernstein is no stranger to adulation. But not even Bernstein was prepared for the reception he got last week as the first full-scale U.S. symphony to visit Turkey in years gave two concerts at Istanbul's bowl-shaped, Open-Air Theater. At the head of the 106-piece New York Philharmonic, Bernstein faced an audience of music-hungry Turks that overflowed the bowl's 5,000 seats, crashed through wooden barriers and stampeded past police lines to jam every aisle and step.
Lenny gave them two programs to remember; Mozart, Brahms, Beethoven and on to the U.S. moderns, with Aaron Copland's high-stepping Billy the Kid and George...
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