My next encounter was with the diminutive Oscar Lampe who led for Beecham from 1946 to about 1948, and was one of the greatest technical wizards of the violin who ever lived. Beecham taught him every note and very nuance of the cadenza in Strauss' Heldenleben, with Strauss himself in the background. He recorded this so perfectly that when I played it to some of the members of the Philadelphia Orchestra they said, with one accord, 'It's gotta be Heifetz!' Yet Oscar seemed to lack all enterprise in his own powers of invention, and while he was certainly capable of leading with great skill, somehow he never stamped his personality on the section or the rest of the orchestra. I wonder what have been his fate had he been around thirty years later: he was sacked on the spot for smoking and drinking a bottle of beer over the High Altar of Canterbury Cathedral, which I feel would probably be regarded nowadays as scarcely a mild idiosyncratic failing. << less