Quotes from Harvey Sachs

We ought to take a deep breath—symbolically—with the singer, because we have, in a sense, "made it." We have survived the first movement's brutality and despair, participated in the second's harsh struggle, and been purified by the third's glowing acceptance of life as it is. What Beethoven wants us to experience now is all-embracing joy.

But the maestro's biggest project during the second half of the season was the first North American production of Paul Dukas's Ariane et Barbe-bleue, on 29 March 1911. Ariane, a forward-looking, brilliantly orchestrated work, had had its premiere in Paris four years earlier, and had since been performed in Vienna, conducted by Alexander Zemlinsky and admired by Arnold Schoenberg, Alban Berg, and Anton Webern, among others. Toscanini