This sort of work was unheard of in Germany when Rattle started as conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic, the country's most famous orchestra, four years ago.
Back then, things were more formal: "When I first started, the conductor wore tails," said Lee Reilly, an 83-year-old retired dentist from Ho-Ho-Kus who attended the library show.
How did you get started as a conductor?
This season he started as principal conductor of the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra in Sweden, a post that gives him practice as a music director out of the international spotlight.
"When I started out, the conductors would scream so that I would go to the bathroom and throw up, then return to work," said Mr. Silipigni, whose career has spanned four decades.
Over the past few weeks, Metro-North Railroad has started arming its conductors with hand-held devices that print tickets and store fare data and that ultimately will accept credit cards.
At one of his first concerts with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra (RPO), its first bassoon, Gwydion Brooke, equally known for his wonderful playing and his baiting of conductors, started to give Tod a bad time.
"About an hour went by before I finally heard a conductor whisper to another guy 'Uh, the train came apart.' " Mrs. Thorne said that "once our train started moving again, a conductor asked a man riding between cars to return to his seat.
Finally, after we'd started moving again, the conductor made an announcement: "Albany is next.
Its conductor, Thomas Crawford, started it as the Orchestra of the Old Fairfield Academy in 1985, and it made several recordings before adopting its current name in 1999.
