of which he would not only conduct but would also be televised to a national audience. Pollack claims Bernstein might have found Connotations "boring" and kept it on the program solely out of duty to his old friend. Despite Bernstein's own musical antipathies, Adams claims the conductor generally remained open-minded and curious enough "to try something at least once." Among the world premieres of "difficult" works he led were Olivier Messiaen's Turangalîla-Symphonie in Boston in 1949 and Carter's Concerto for Orchestra in New York in 1970; and despite his apparent lack of identification with Carter's music, he described the composer in 1975 as "a brilliant mind and a supremely intelligent musician." Bernstein conducted Connotations again during the first week of regular Philharmonic concerts in 1963 and included it among the pieces the orchestra played on its European tour in February 1963. He would also commission a subsequent orchestral work from Copland, which became Inscape, and conduct Connotations again in an all-Copland concert with the New York Philharmonic in 1989. Even with this advocacy and the chance to familiarize himself at length, Connotations apparently remained a work that Bernstein did not conduct well. Critic Peter Davis, in his review of the 1989 performance, writes that while Connotations remained "admittedly not a very lovable piece," in Bernstein's hands it "sounded more fulsome than portentous." Acoustical problems with Philharmonic Hall Copland acknowledged that the acoustics at the premiere were "shrill." While Philharmonic Hall was being renovated in 1976 in an attempt to improve its sound, Harold C. Schonberg wrote, "For all we know, Connotations is a masterpiece. But one thing is certain—it did not make many friends for Lincoln Center in 1962." While admitting the work was "written in Copland's austere, objective, abstract style," he suggested that bad acoustics might have also played a part in the work's failure at the premiere. The orchestra that night had been augmented by a large chorus to perform the first movement of Gustav Mahler's Eighth Symphony, which pushed the orchestra forward, "out of its normal playing position ... The sound was bad, bad. The bass response was sorely deficient, the hall was plagued with echoes, the musicians on stage reported that they could not hear each other very well (just great for ensemble) and in general Philharmonic Hall sounded like a cheap hi-fi set with the bass speakers out of the circuit. Composer efforts Copland conducted