Music: Conductor of Moderns

Composer Igor Stravinsky has a fierce distrust of most conductors, especially those who try to conduct his own works. But last week Stravinsky, 76, sat in the balcony of Manhattan's Town Hall and watched benignly while a slim, intense man mounted the podium and launched the first U.S. performance of Stravinsky's most recent score—Threni: Lamentations of the Prophet Jeremiah. The conductor: Stravinsky's protégé Robert Craft, at 35 one of the world's leading interpreters of avant-garde music.

First performed in Venice last fall (TIME, Oct. 6). Threni is a 33-minute work for chorus, orchestra...

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