The Israel Philharmonic Orchestra (IPO) is about to leave for a month-long series of concerts in Japan, West Germany and the U.S., under the baton of Leonard Bernstein.
The American Jewish composer-conductor told a press conference here yesterday he had been conducting and playing with the orchestra since 1948, when it was still the Palestine Symphony Orchestra — PSO — which he called in a slip of the tongue, amid laughter, the “PLO.”
The main work to be played during the tour will be Mahler’s Ninth Symphony, which Bernstein described as “the most Jewish piece ever written.”
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