The stage lights of Manhattan's Carnegie Hall glared down last week on a frail little man whose cork-tipped baton at first seemed to wave in a rhythm unconnected with the New York Philharmonic's. But after a brief edginess in the opening work, he drove the Philharmonic through Ralph Vaughan Williams' bubbling Symphony No. 8 and made the music chortle, brag, sneer and guffaw with Falstaffian humor in a sheer triumph of spirit. At the end, the audience gave him as warm an ovation as has been heard in Carnegie this year. After 15 years...
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