Chicago Symphony Conductor Sir Georg Solti slipped as he stepped out of an elevator, and his assistant fell into a heroine's role. With Solti bedridden after straining a ligament in his back, Symphony Chorus Director Margaret Hillis, 56, was tapped as a last-minute stand-in to conduct a Manhattan performance of Mahler's difficult Eighth Symphony. Hillis spent an hour with the ailing maestro going over the score, listened to a radio tape of an earlier performance, and with just two days' preparation stepped up to the conductor's podium in Carnegie Hall. "I did my...
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