A fully professional orchestra, many of whose players are recent conservatory graduates, the Riverside Symphony is best known for its yearly series of three concerts at Alice Tully Hall.

Also in 1987, he helped found the New World Symphony in Miami, a training orchestra for recent conservatory graduates, whose performances and recordings have often received high praise.

The Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by George Marriner Maull, was created to provide performance opportunities primarily for recent conservatory graduates.

Following the example of the Orpheus chamber orchestra, this recently formed ensemble of young conservatory graduates performs without a conductor.

It nurtures new conservatory graduates and creates full seasons of professional concerts, tours and recordings.

An ensemble composed of young conservatory graduates, the New World Symphony, based in Miami, was founded by Mr. Thomas in 1987.

Even in this world overflowing with hyperpolished conservatory graduates, it is not every week that a young pianist sits down to offer a whole book of the Chopin etudes in recital.

The news was good for the orchestra - a professional-level ensemble that trains young conservatory graduates for life in a symphony - but premature.

"We know that all young people can play the piano," said the pianist Claude Frank, referring to the high technical standard among today's conservatory graduates.

But nature abhors a vacuum, and in 1986 a group of recent conservatory graduates banded together as the Italian Symphony Orchestra of Bergamo.