In the April season Flagstad was back to delight and it was out first "Ring" with Wilhelm Furtwängler.... The great man had a very strange beat, the only word to describe it is - wobbly.... For example: the opening of "Siegfried" has two bars timpani roll and then two bassoons come in, in thirds. Furtwangler would start quite steadily for two bars and then, just before the bassoon entry, he would begin to wobble and they didn't know where they were; poor Jack and George Alexandra would be sweating with terror.... Furtwängler considered the "Ring" purely orchestrally, it seemed to me. He took no notice of the stage; the curtain got stuck and would not go up for the third act of "Die Walküre" so the Valkyries were singing away behind it but when the stage manager came to apologise afterwards the maestro had not even noticed. This encouraged the great tenor, Lauritz Melchior, who was the Siegmund, to have a little fun by holding his high notes for far too long because he knew that Furtwangler would just go on conducting, regardless. On the whole, the pace of his "Ring" was a little quicker than we were used to, and thereby hangs a tale. Tuba or percussion players with a very large number of bars' rest would time them carefully, often with a stopwatch, so that they could relax - except of course for Jimmy Bradshaw, the timpanist, who was still counting with clacking denture. Charlie Turner, the triangle player, had a very long wait for his first entry in "Rheingold" when the gold is seen for the first tie so he would retire to the "Nag's Head" and stroll quietly back to take his place shortly before he was needed. On the first night of "Rheingold" with Furtwangler we became seriously alarmed as time was getting on and there was no sign of Charlie Turner. Now there were only a couple of bars to go - then came the sound of running feet in the passage under the stage, one bar - and the door to the pit opened, a hand came round, struck the triangle and vanished again. Next day all the stopwatches were out for a retiming. << less