Article: CSO is her `wedding gift' // She conducts as mate beams in her audience

For her debut Tuesday evening as a conductor of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Sondra Berman Epstein chose a familiar piece with a pretty melody - but most of all, "something romantic."

"After all," Berman Epstein said in her dressing room before the concert in Orchestra Hall, "this is a wedding present from my husband."

With that priority in mind, Berman Epstein, 50, mounted the podium and directed the CSO in the waltz from Act I of Tchaikovsky's "Swan Lake," realizing the fantasy of any music lover.

Berman Epstein's husband, Chicago architect and CSO trustee Sidney Epstein, 64, bought his wife's opportunity to wave the baton last April for $5,000 during a radiothon auction to ...

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