Following a week of bad publicity and press revelations about his behavior as music director of the National Arts Centre Orchestra, Pinchas Zukerman has as much as admitted that it wasn’t physical exhaustion that caused him to take a last-minute leave of absence from the ensemble for the remainder of the current season. Zukerman has been quoted saying that the NACO has some “rotten apples” who have created a divisive atmosphere within the organization that “has to be eradicated.” Representatives of the NACO’s musicians have shot back that Zukerman’s single-mindedness and unwillingness to hear dissent is the real problem, and the orchestra’s manager is backpedaling in an attempt to ratchet the rhetoric down a few notches.