On Monday I finally got to conduct. When Tcherepnin turned to me and said, 'All right, why don't you have a go at the first movement?' I was so stunned I had to ask him to repeat it: 'What did you say?'

I climbed on to the podium, forgot my score, came down again to get it, went up again, and began. At first it was rather tentative, but things soon fell into place and it all went smoothly. Of course my total lack of experience for example made it hard for me to distinguish one woodwind instrument from another, so when I had to indicate specific entries I couldn't tell where was the oboe and where the clarinet, all I could do was gesture vaguely in the right direction. I also found it hard to pick out the sounds of the different instruments, somehow I couldn't hear them properly, and on one occasion when things started coming apart it was four bars before I could identify the culprit who had come in early.