This message came time stamped:  3/2/00 8:02 PM.  The Y2K bug is here
already, a year early!

More seriously, I don't think you can write off the Hungarian contribution
to conducting so easily by assimilating it into the "Austro-Hungarian"
Empire.

Hungary also produced an extraordinarily disproportionate number of great
mathematicians, and from one recent biography of the great peripatetic
Paul Erdos, it is clear that the country's education and social system
fostered math.  Top math students were treated the way All American
football heroes are in high school.  Teaching math even at the high
school level was enormously prestigious and the best minds were proud to
accept that responsibilty.  I don't know as much about Hungarian musical
education, but I am pretty sure that there are some analogies here too.

All the conductors mentioned, and many of the great Hungarian
mathematicians ultimately came to the United States and enriched
its culture and helped its scientific leadership.  Now there is peace
elsewhere, and we continue to produce (mainly) great athletes, for that's
what the country is really interested in.  De gustibus.

Eric Kisch
(who's only half Hungarian on his mother's side of the family)