In my early musical browsings I had been sceptical of the difference between this or that ‘reading’ of the score.  I went to hear the music, and provided the orchestra was a good one the conductor scarcely mattered: he was obviously needed to keep large forces together, but the less he interfered the better.  But when Koussevitsky, great conductor though he may have been, broadcast the Eroica I was profoundly disturbed at the liberties he took: he halted the imperious flow of the first movement with sudden inexplicable changes of tempo and even ‘held back’ the arrival of the real theme in the finale when it ought, according to the score, to have floated in, joyfully and inevitably, above the bass.