That busy summer and fall set a pattern for succeeding years [...] Walter's extensive preparation involved hearing and criticizing his previous recordings, marking the scores page by page with his dynamics and bowings, correcting from his mind’s ear the contours and balances of how many performances. These markings were then transferred into the orchestral parts by a copyist, saving us untold time and trouble at the sessions. Back in New York, I underwent a similar though less intense process of familiarization, dividing each symphony into fragments of fifteen or twenty minutes, the most we planned to attempt in one day. We all came nervously to the first session in January [...] Dr. Walter looked smaller and older now in his old black rehearsal jacket, and I felt misgivings; but as we entered the hall to a standing ovation, his step became sure, the years dropped away like husks, and he almost sprang onto the podium. “So, gentlemen, thank you. It seems we will be seeing a lot of each other this winter and I hope we become a good working family. Today we begin with [...]” All under control. Three hours later we were veterans with all our fears unrealized. Dr. Walter was enthusiastic about the hall and the orchestra. A few seating changes and we were on the way [...] Bruno Walter’s rehearsals were an education and a joy. In the four years of our association, I seldom heard his voice raised in impatience, and never in anger. The men came to the sessions as if to a master class. After rapping their music stands in tribute at the conductor’s entrance, their tangibly receptive silence would be broken only by his exhortations or by music. Tension was minimal; concentration was absolute. Walter was an eminently articulate man, and his guidance - now spoken, now sung in that firm eighty-year- old voice was colorful, warm, hortatory, and unfailingly pertinent. “Come, my friends,” he would say, “once more: trumpets a little less, violins more singing, you know? It’s much better but I do it again.” Although his patience was rarely tried by this responsive orchestra, he knew, from sixty- three years of conducting experience, just how each measure should sound, and there was no getting around him. I remember recording on four separate occasions the first four bars of the Academic Festival Overture because the accents weren’t just the way he wanted them. Humor was always present at the sessions too, though never in the Beechamesque form of stories or jokes. During almost every recording something would happen to touch his funny hone, and a quiet remark would send the orchestra into ripples of laughter - leaving the control-room contingent feeling much deprived. （未完） --

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