GENTLEMEN, MORE DOLCE, PLEASE!

Subtitled An Irreverent Memoir of Thirty Years in the Boston Symphony, these are upbeat grace notes compiled from Mr. Dickson's journal. Anecdotal, intimate, interesting this is, studded with musical celebrities from the gently domineering Serge Koussevitzky--""Gentlemen it is awfully not togedder"" to the eccentricities of Sir Thomas Beecham to the cerebrum of Stravinsky--""not a great conductor; indeed he often gets lost in his own music."" Strings snap as quickly as tempers; the ensemble is sometimes a beat ahead, or behind a soloist (one deliberately tried to lose his conductor), each section registers its noteworthy complaints while backstage Isaac Stern and Leonard Bernstein try to explain the game of baseball in French to Charles Muench or Jascha Heifetz plays--Ping-Pong. It's for others like the little boy who wrote in appreciation--""I have a musical ear and it listened to every note.