Music: Toy Symphonist

For most of the day, the plump eleven-year-old crawled around the bathroom floor steering the electric toy automobile with the flashing headlights. The next evening, dressed in a white jacket, short black pants, white socks and black shoes, he made his way to Brussels' Palais des Beaux Arts, where he conducted the Antwerp Philharmonic Orchestra in Beethoven's Eighth Symphony, Egmont Overture and Third Piano Concerto. At another point in the program, with a slight bow to the royal box, Giuseppe (for

Verdi) Arturo (for Toscanini) Alfidi sat down at the piano and expertly played his own 25-minute Concerto in G Minor, dedicated...

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