Follow Widor if you can for the right tempo

SIR – What settles the correct tempo of a piece of music is the composer’s own recommendation. When recording the famous Toccata from his Symphony for Organ No 5, its composer, Charles-marie Widor, then 88, took six minutes and 45 seconds – quite fast enough for an organist like me. Nick Perry

Lincoln

SIR – Sir Thomas Beecham’s reputation for speed (Letters, October 10) caught up with him at a rehearsal of Handel’s Israel in Egypt with the Hallé.

They came to the double chorus, “He Gave Them Hailstones for Rain”, which is marked Allegro and 168 quavers per minute. Beecham increased the tempo and, before they had even completed the introduction, the bass trombone player stopped playing. Beecham noticed and said: “What’s the matter, can’t you play this?”

The trombonist, a Yorkshireman, replied: “Well, I don’t know whether you know anything about trombone playing, but if there had been as many bulrushes in Egypt as there are demisemiquavers in my score, they would never have found Moses.” Neil Williams

Ilkley, West Yorkshire

SIR – Enhancing the appeal of classical music to a younger audience can be achieved in ways other than tampering with the tempo (Letters, October 8).

How many of your readers, I wonder, remember the extract from Brahms’s Symphony No 4 in E minor by Yes in their track Cans and Brahms? Or how about Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition by Emerson, Lake & Palmer?

It was the Days of Future Passed album by the Moody Blues that made me appreciate orchestral music. Nigel Mckie

Helston, Cornwall