“FIFTEEN-MINUTE DEMONSTRATION follows last night's performance at the Metropolitan.” Thus spake the New York Times in a headline. And indeed, it was one of the greatest triumphs in the sixty-five-year history of the Metropolitan Opera, maybe even the ultimate pinnacle of artistic achievement and audience approbation up to that time—a sustained wild ovation, the likes of which I had never previously witnessed, nor had any of my veteran orchestra colleagues. To put this in proper perspective, one has to realize that audience acclamations in the 1940s were not yet the overly ostentatious, instant standing ovations of today. The event produced an outpouring. And for once, it was well deserved. I feel very privileged to have been a small part of that absolutely remarkable performance. On the goose-pimple meter, it outranked even the Otello experience I have described earlier. The two artists primarily responsible for the electrifying excitement, integrity, and sovereignty of that performance were Fritz Reiner and the Bulgarian dramatic soprano, Ljuba Welitsch. Some of my older readers will realize that I am talking about that legendary evening of February 4, 1949, at the old Met, when the season's opening performance of Strauss's Salomé took place.

For me, as a young composer and an ardent admirer of Strauss's music, getting to actually play Salomé was an extraordinary experience, heightened by my deep love and intimate knowledge of the music for almost a decade. I knew practically every note of that score, not just the horn parts but the whole score from top to bottom, from the first C-sharp minor clarinet run to the final spastic C-minor outbursts signifying the deathblows with which Herod has Salomé executed.

My life with Strauss's Salomé began around age twelve, when I came upon my father's piano score of the opera and started, stumblingly, to work my way though the whole score over a period of weeks, savoring every delicious, dramatic, exciting moment in that work. It was an incredible experience, way beyond the kind that you might have in a music history or analysis class, where the time spent on Salomé, if at all, might be two hours and one listening assignment. On my own schedule I could linger on any passage for minutes, for hours, again and again.