the flaming
enthusiasm that consumes him.

His motions are patiently sincere, almost unconscious. He enters
carrying his baton under his right arm, like a riding crop. Orchestra
and audience rise. He acknowledges this mark of respect and the
tumultuous applause with a quick bow, an indulgent smile and a gesture
that plainly say: "Thanks, thanks, all this is very nice, you're a
lot of kind, good children, but for heaven's sake let's get down to
business."

While waiting a few seconds for listeners and players to settle
themselves he rests his baton against his right shoulder, like a
sword. Then the sharp rap. The Maestro closes his eyes. Another rap,
sharper than the first. Oppressive, electrical silence. He lifts the
baton as if saluting the orchestra. The concert begins.

As a rule the right hand gives the tempo and tracks down every
smallest melody, wherever it may hide in the score. In passages for
the strings, the baton indicates the type of bowing the conductor
wants from the violins, violas or cellos.

The left hand, with the long thumb separate from the other fingers,
is the orchestra's guide to the Maestro's interpretative desires. It
wheedles the tone from the men. It coaxes, hushes, demands increased
volume. It moves, trembling, to the heart to ask for feeling, closes
into a fist to get sound and fury from the brasses, thunder from the
drums. Through it all, the Maestro talks, sings, whistles and blows
out his cheeks for the benefit of trumpeters and trombonists.

After a concert, keyed to feverish excitement, he often plays over
piano scores of every number that appeared on the program. Then he
may lie awake all night, worrying over two possible tempi in which
he might have taken some passage--shadings in rhythm that the average
listener would not, could not discern.

He is never satisfied with himself. Some years ago, when he was still
conducting at the Scala in Milan, he came home one night after the
opera. Mr. Toscanini does not eat before a performance, and his family
wait with the evening meal until he joins them.

As he stepped into the hall he saw his wife and daughters walking into
the dining room. "Where are you going?" he asks them. "In to supper,
of course," one of them told him. The Maestro exploded: "What? After
THAT performance? Oh, no, you're not. It shall never be said of my
family that they could eat after such a horrible show!" All of them,
including the great man himself, went to