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The first people to hear the piece,
then , were the stude nts . What did they
think of it?
" Peo ple wer e cry ing the first time
we heard the work ," says viol ini st
Melanie Dexter '8 4.
"The pie ce is totally unlike any th in g
else," re marks C hris Norton '83. a
timpanist. "It's a th rill to play."
"T here 's a part in the middle with
th e percuss ion and the strings . . .,"
begin s violist Nan cy Holland '83 . She
sto ps, and shudde rs. " I can't really
descr ibe it. But I wish I could be sitting
out the re and listening to it. "
The orchestra rehearsed alone at
first; Stargell joined them in ea rly
December. M ost stude n ts were cur ious
a bou t Will ie ; some were init iall y ske ptical.
" I though t this wa s just a promotional
hype," admits cellist M ark
Stewart '8 4. " 1 thought it wasjust a
way of drawing cro wds . But he won us
ove r at the first rehea rsal. "
What Stargell did at his first rehearsal
was sim ple , but effect ively ca st
as ide all doubts. " He came ove r to
me ," recall s David Effron, "and asked
m e for my bato n." Willie too k the
baton and waved it knowingly at the
orchestra. T he stu de nts, as if on cu e,
broke loudly in to the wron g piece
-Beethoven ' s Fifth . Willie laughed.
The ice was brok en.
Still, Stargell would not have won
the stude nts' hearts had he not, first
and foremost, been thor oughly
de dica ted to the task at hand .
" I ' m not afraid of it, l'mjust ex ­
cited ," Stargell said a t the tim e . "I'm
ex pecting a lot of myself and I'm working
extrem ely hard at it. " Alone in hi s
hotel roo m eac h night afte r a rehearsal ,
St argell would review and critique a
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