For a moment the man who can make music like no one else on earth listened to the girl and her pet. Then he sighed and said:
"Oh, if I could only whistle!"
Those who know Mr. Toscanini intimately find in those six simple words the key to his character. He is, they say, the most modest man who ever lived, a man sincerely at a loss to understand the endless fuss that is made about him.
Time and again he has told his friends that he has no fonder desire than to be able to walk about undisturbed, to saunter along the avenue, look into shop-windows, do the thousand-and-one common little things that are permitted other human beings.
That same humility, that same incurable bewilderment at public acclaim must have been apparent to all who ever attended a Toscanini concert, saw him at the close of a superb interpretation bowing as one of the group of players and making deprecating gestures that seemed to say: "What you have heard was a great score brought to life by these excellent musicians—why applaud me?"
At rehearsals he is the strictest of disciplinarians but not a prima donna conductor. He demands the utmost attention and concentration from his men, brooks no disturbance or interruption. On the other hand, he is punctual to a fault, arrives fifteen minutes ahead of time, never asks for special privileges of any kind.
He has been described as the world's most patient and impatient orchestral director. In rehearsal he will take the men through a passage, a mere phrase, innumerable times to achieve a certain tonal or dynamic effect. But he explodes when he feels that he is faced with stupidity or stubbornness.
Some famous conductors have added the B of Barnum to the three immortal B's of music—Bach, Beethoven and Brahms. Those wielders of the stick are great showmen as well as great musicians.
Not so Mr. Toscanini. In his platform manner there is nothing calculated for theatrical effect. He doesn't care in the least what he looks like "from out front." His gestures are designed not to impress, enrapture or englamour the musical groundlings, but to convey his sharply defined wishes to his men and transmit to them the flaming enthusiasm that consumes him.
His motions are patiently sincere, almost unconscious. He enters carrying his baton under his right arm, like a riding crop. Orchestra and audience rise. He acknowledges this mark of respect and the tumultuous applause with a quick bow, an indulgent smile and a gesture that plainly say: "Thanks, thanks, all this is very nice, you're a lot of kind, good children, but for heaven's sake let's get down to business."