ABSTRACT
W hen Leonard Bernstein was appointed music director of the New York Philharmonic in 1958, he instituted a novel assistant conductors’ program, ostensibly to develop American talent. One of the first to be chosen was my upstairs neighbor on Sullivan Street and musical colleague at the Mannes School of Music, Stephan Bauer Mengelberg, nephew of the famous Dutch conductor. What seemed a world away suddenly came within reach and I, too, applied. In February of 1961, a letter arrived from the Koussevitsky Foundation inviting me to meet Mr. Bernstein at a gathering to be held in his studio apartment at the Osborne, Stanford White’s massive brownstone-and-stained-glass edifice diagonally across the street from Carnegie Hall. I thought I was crossing the Rubicon when I entered the lobby on a Friday afternoon, March 10, 1961. I decided not to cancel a pair of Young Audience concerts with the Chamber Brass Players I was to play earlier that day, thinking I would be less nervous than if I just waited about. The five of us were crammed into a small sedan, with the tuba as a sixth passenger. By the time I struggled out of the car when it dropped me off on 57th Street, my Irish tweed suit and hand-loomed wool tie were a rumpled mess. Under my arm, in the hip fashion of the day, I carried my green corduroy trumpet bag.
