Their Musical Director was my fourth giant, Rudolf Kempe who was quite unknown in England at that time. He made such an enormous impression with his command and understanding of Strauss's music that David Webster immediately signed him for the revival of "Salome" in our forthcoming 1953-54 season. Kempe was tall and very quiet with strange dark slanting eyes; when he first came to us he had hardly any English at all but he could count and manage the rehearsal numbers. His only other phrase was: "The same", which served to indicate to us that he wanted to repeat a passage. He had no real need of words, he conveyed everything with his expression and his hands; and his stick technique was of unsurpassed clarity. "Salome" starts with a very soft rising scale on the clarinet and we were accustomed to a certain amount of anticipatory flailing from Rankl. At the first rehearsal Kempe gave a small, neat flick with his baton and Olive Wright, the first clarinet, was bewildered and did not come in. Kempe was firm; he made it plain that this was all that was really needed and we soon became used to the small beat which was in fact perfectly clear. The results were astonishing; like Kleiber, Kempe produced such an effect on the whole orchestra that we would have followed him to a man through fire and flood. He had been a fine oboe player himself, with the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, and this increased his affinity with the players while his skill and experience as a piano accompanist made him the ideal conductor where singers were concerned. << less