Music: Toscanini Takes London

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Londoners will queue up for anything from a prizefight to a prime rib, but this time they established a record even for London: they queued up to start a queue. Carrying blankets and food, the first of them began lining up outside the Royal Festival Hall 60 hours in advance. They were allowed to sleep overnight in a corridor. Then the real queue began in front of the box office. In such fashion last week, London music lovers awaited the first English appearance since 1939 of Arturo Toscanini, 85.

The queuers were hoping for standing room. Reserved seats had been gone since July. Within a few days of the announcement that Toscanini would conduct a pair of fall concerts, Festival Hall drew a flood of 60,000 requests for tickets. Since the hall could hold no more than 6,522 at the two concerts, reserved seats were parceled out by lot to every tenth applicant. The top price was raised from $1.70 to $14.70 a ticket, but music lovers hardly even blinked at the prices.

In his own way Conductor Toscanini seemed to be as keen about his London visit as London was. In Milan last summer, he had heard the touring Philharmonia Orchestra for the first time, and had announced simply: "I must conduct it."

The Philharmonia was founded in 1945 as a recording orchestra, has given no regular public concerts until this year's tour. But some of the musicians had played under the Maestro before, and knew his violent rehearsal temperament firsthand. The rest had heard legends of his ferocity. They awaited rehearsals with some apprehension.

They need not have worried. At the first rehearsal last week, Toscanini merely called for Brahms's First Symphony, led them through it without halting them once, murmuring bravos and molto benes. "Gentlemen," he told them at the end of a third rehearsal, "you could not have played better. I am very pleased." This week the winners of the reserved-seat lottery and the standing-room queue got to hear what had pleased the Maestro so. London's reaction: 13 years was a long time between Toscaninis, but it was worth the wait.