Even as a young boy growing up in 1930s Brooklyn my father said he was enamored with classical music. He would play records in the room he shared with his brother Lawrence and stand on a wooden box, pretending that he was conducting an orchestra. His hands would soar through the air, rhythmically guiding the violins to their powerful crescendo. When I was a young boy, sitting on our carpet in front of the stereo listening to stations littered with pop hits and catchy tunes, these stories didn’t mean much to me. Nevertheless, my father would patiently describe the music as vibrant and powerful, as he waved his hands through the air in time with Wagner’s Symphony in C major and Beethoven’s 3rd. I could never really understand why he did it, but his strange performance always made me smile.
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