Thanks Mimi for your eleoquent tribute to Lennie the Magician.  I too fell
under that spell many times during the years we lived in NY and heard him
live.  You are so right about his ability to draw you into the performance
in a way that made all outside issues irrelevant.  And that to me is one of
the great joys of music (to use another of Lennie's titles).

Two brief examples from personal experience:  One year Sinopli did the
Mahler 3rd and it was an extraordinary analytical, structurally centered
performance that laid out the work clearly and accurately.  Next year
Lennie did it and one forgot about structure and balance and other
intellectual criteria, one was inside the composer, in synch with his
grandeur and his tortured soul.  Lennie, the musicians and the audience
were all wrung out.  There's a wonderful German expression:  Ein Erlebnis
- a peak experience in one's life.

Item two:  a Richard Tucker Memorial Competition benefit concert at
Carnegie Hall.  Sherrill Milnes MC, Mario Bernardi conducting, stars and
prize winners doing favorite arias, etc.  Level of orchestral conducting -
ho hum at best.  At the end of the first half, Hildegarde Behrens came on
to do "Brunnhilde's Immolation" from "Gotterdammerung." On to the podium
strides Lennie, points a finger at the woodwind and a totally new sound
emerges from the orchestra.  I can still see my wife, who was glancing
at her program at that moment, suddenly whipping up her head with a "wow!
what's that?" expression.  The magic was back.  Alas, it was business as
usual for the second half, but if ever there was tangible evidence of what
a real Maestro can achieve, this was it.

Lennie for all his inconsistencies and personal problems had the magic more
often than not.  We should be eternally grateful to have been a witness --
and in many of his recordings the magic emerges.  Who today has it?

Eric Kisch