As a producer of concerts, he has played a pioneering role in promoting thematic programming and new concert formats.

His brand of "thematic programming" is often concerned with the fallibility of history's judgment.

One sign is the adoption of thematic programming, in which a literary or historical idea is used to organize the concert.

This is one of the risks of thematic programming: using music as a means rather than an end.

You could say it was a test of thematic programming: if a program exists without program notes, can anyone hear the relation between the pieces?

She also brought in the American Symphony Orchestra, lately famous for its thematic programming.

By the time he retired, in 1969, she had inherited the idea of thematic programming - concert series built around one idea or composer.

And nearly everyone is experimenting with thematic programming, in which the circumstances surrounding a work become as important as themes within it.

"It will expand our operations dramatically," she said, with "new films from an international perspective, thematic programming, retrospectives."

Somewhere this side of kneejerk thematic programming, it ought to be possible at least to keep works on a program from warring with one another.