Polish on the Keys

"It wasn't the lack of dressing rooms that got me," said Conductor-Pianist Leonard Bernstein grimly. "Or the fact that there was no air conditioning. What did it was the ghoul that put the furniture polish on the keys." Bernstein had just led the New York Philharmonic through the first concert of its seven-week Latin American tour. The experience was one that neither the orchestra nor the Panama City audience was likely ever to forget.

When the Philharmonic turned up at the Rio Theatre, the players discovered that a tropical thunderstorm had saturated their trunks, lined up along an outside wall, and soaked their evening clothes. Next they learned that the Rio had no dressing rooms for them. Stoically, they wrung out their sodden dinner jackets, changed clothes in the street before a curious mob and a swarm of newspaper photographers. Inside, one of Bernstein's aides noticed that the overzealous fellow who had buffed the piano had left a fine oil slick on the keys. (It was only mosquito repellent, explained the management.) Someone produced a bottle of whisky to cut the grease, but before it could become the most celebrated fifth in Philharmonic annals since Beethoven's, straight alcohol was delivered from a nearby pharmacy, and the keys were scrubbed clean.

With typical Latin disrespect for any but bullfight schedules, even the gate crashers filtered in late. When Bernstein finally launched into the Panamanian national anthem, the orchestra consistently flatted in one repeated passage due to a copyist's error in the scores. In the packed, humid house Bernstein flailed his way drippingly through Aaron Copland's Symphony No. 3. When he returned to the stage to play Ravel's Concerto in G Major for Piano and Orchestra, he promptly retreated to the wings: the management had neglected to provide a pianist's bench. A stagehand scurried out with a chair, and the concert went on, punctuated by the barking of dogs resounding through open doors from the street and by the outraged sounds of late arrivals who found their seats already occupied. The audience sat through it all, radiating enthusiasm, even applauded between movements. "They were fine," said Conductor Bernstein tensely over a Scotch and soda at a postconcert reception. The next night the orchestra scored an even bigger triumph in Caracas, where it performed before a capacity crowd of 3,000 and a television audience of 1,000,000. Next high hurdle on the orchestra's ANTA-sponsored tour: a concert at La Paz (11,900 ft.), where plans are afoot to provide oxygen tanks to help the bulge-cheeked brass and woodwind players huff their way through the evening.

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