If such manifestations were typically Russian rather than Soviet, one set of musical experiences during my tours was indigenous to the new social order which the Revolution had created: the conductorless orchestra called Persymphans. Some of the most unorthodox musical challenges of these trips to Soviet Russia I experienced in regular appearances with this unique body of musicians. After decades of concerto-playing with conductors who coördinate a soloist’s performance with that of the orchestra, who synthesize the whole and mediate between the two when there are discrepancies in conception, I found the contrast of these entirely new working conditions stimulating./ Sometimes, in the nineteen-twenties, after an appearance in Berlin or at the Leipzig Gewandhaus, and still under the spell of the music-obsessed, frenzied Furtwängler, or of the infinite song that flows from Bruno Walter’s baton, I would stand only four or five days later on the platform of the Moscow Conservatory Hall rehearsing with this conductorless orchestra. Playing the same works that Furtwängler had directed for me so recently-with that suggestive power of his that swept away every obstacle, even long-standing convictions of seasoned orchestra players and soloists in matters of tempo and interpretation, when those convictions were contrary to his own image, Furtwängler-like. / At the Persymphans rehearsal, on the contrary, there was a workshop atmosphere generated by proud artisans bound together in the common task of making good music. Each man had the right to have his little say on occasion. Mutual respect, in the knowledge that careful sifting of the highest available talent had brought them together, rather than pull or favouritism or regard for past achievement (the achievements of orchestra players of high repute are often, alas, long past), gave them a serenity unwonted in other orchestras. Bickerings, backbitings, sycophancy had no place in their setup. / I rehearsed and played with my back turned to the orchestra, of course, the strings grouped in a semicircle around me, the half-dozen or so immediately to my right and left having their backs turned to the audience, and the wood winds and brass behind me, vertically, across the inner part of the semicircle. / These performances were to one’s overall musicianship as the tempering process is to a steel blade. Anyone will understand who has ever attended a rehearsal with a conductor, or who has listened to an orchestra performance with even a little imagination as to the spadework which goes into it. We even gave a world première: that of Casella's concerto, dedicated to me; the composer, conscious of the usualness of this première, had all the data pertaining to it engraved on the flyleaf of the score. << less