Tchaikovsky's R&J.  It was the first piece I ever learned to identify
by name (at the ripe age of three) though I was naturally familiar with
the Lone Ranger Song.  Sixty years ago it was.  I can still remember my
dad taking the record player down from the closet shelf and spreading
the 78s out on the bed.  I asked if we had to be quiet to keep our voices
from going onto the records.  He said that it wasn't an issue, but that
we should be quiet anyway and listen to the pretty music.  Oddly, once
the record player broke when I was about five, he completely lost interest
in classical music, but I never did.

A month or so ago I had the great pleasure of being able to tell Pinchas
Zukerman that he was the first conductor in forty years or more who had
made me hear the piece with new ears in his performance a couple of
nights earlier.  As I am not always the greatest of his admirers, he
had to know that the compliment was not offered casually.

Richard

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