...but another occasion impressed him in a very different and disagreeable manner. It was the night Basil Cameron was unaccountable allowed to conduct "Tristan". He was not an opera conductor and after the Prelude, which he knew from the concert hall, we were all literally wallowing like a ship head-on to the wind. Matters were not helped by his conducting style, once described by the composer John Gardner as "A man trying to get out of a sack." At one point we really seemed about to sink without a trace when Horace (Jimmy) Green, the cor anglais, who had dozed off from a blend of beer and bewilderment, woke up suddenly and started to play so for a moment we all recognized a place where we might be. Finally we did reach the Liebestod, concert-hall stuff once more; Basil Cameron took off his glasses, cheered up and we all finished the opera more or less together. Horst Walter was in the prompt box that night and he staggered out to meet us afterwards, holding his head. "In Dresden," he complained "we have an emergency button in the prompt box and at such a terrible moment one would press it to bring down the curtain - but tonight, I looked - and there was no button!" It took most of the evening to console him. << less