The performance of Ala had all the trappings of a great occasion - crowds of people wanting to hear it, all tickets sold out, and so forth. What was a great joy to me was to hear, from the very first bars, how much better the orchestra sounded on stage and with the iron curtain. The orchestra played much better than it had done in January, but could have done with still more refinement. As it was, from a certain lack of confidence in the barbaric music, also occasionally from hostility, the orchestra neither could nor would play sensitively. All the same, the finale came off with blinding éclat, and the newly unleashed tam-tam player unleashed dazzlingly golden sounds. Conducting the Procession of the Sun was a pleasure for me, since the orchestration proved to have been meticulously calculated. I set about wringing from the orchestra every last ounce they could possibly give, and still there was more to come until the very last bar.