Encore After Encore

"Plus vite, Maestro, plus vite! Je ne suis pas malade." Nine-year-old Ruth Slenczynski was rehearsing with the Symphony in San Francisco, her home city, and the tempo taken by Conductor Bernardino Molinari, 54, displeased her. Molinari kept his temper at rehearsal but last week's performance was too much for him. The Concerto, Beethoven's First, had ended and he had left the stage. But not little Ruth Slenczynski. She stayed firmly planted on her piano stool, tossing off encore after encore even after Richard M. Tobin came on stage to present her with a string of pearls from the Orchestra Association. Backstage Conductor Molinari snatched up his hat and overcoat, started for the door muttering: "It's an insult to the orchestra, the most confounded impertinence I ever heard of." It took great diplomacy to make him come back, finish the concert.

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