not play the piano. Following compulsory military service and completing his studies at college, Davis served as a clarinettist in the band of the Life Guards. Stationed at Windsor, he had continual opportunities to attend concerts in London under conductors including Sir Thomas Beecham and Bruno Walter. In 1949, he began his career as a freelance musician (the "freelance wilderness", in his own phrase) where he remained until 1957. His first conducting work was with the Kalmar Orchestra, which he co-founded with other former students of the Royal College. He was subsequently invited to conduct the recently founded Chelsea Opera Group in Don Giovanni. In the early years of his career, he also took some engagements as an orchestral clarinettist. What seemed at first to be a full-time conducting appointment, for the Original Ballet Russe in 1952, ended abruptly after three months, when the company collapsed. In between sparse conducting engagements, Davis worked as a coach and lecturer, including spells at the Cambridge University Musical Society and the Bryanston Summer School, where a performance of L'enfance du Christ awakened his love of Berlioz's music. BBC and Sadler's Wells His first breakthrough came in 1957 when, at his third attempt, he secured the post of assistant conductor of the BBC Scottish Orchestra (now the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra). The chief conductor of the orchestra generally chose to conduct the standard repertoire pieces himself, and left Davis with modern works and non-standard repertoire works, including those of Berlioz. By 1959, Davis had developed to the extent that, after a concert of Stravinsky and Mozart with the London Mozart Players, the chief music critic of The Observer, Peter Heyworth, wrote: "Mr Davis conducted two works in a manner that showed that he is not only outstanding among our younger conductors, but probably the best we have produced since Sir Thomas Beecham, his senior by forty-eight years." Davis first found wide acclaim when he stood in for an ill Otto Klemperer in a performance of Don Giovanni, at the Royal Festival Hall in 1959. A year later, Beecham invited him to collaborate with him in preparing The Magic Flute at Glyndebourne. Beecham was taken ill, and Davis conducted the opera. After the Don Giovanni, The Times wrote, "A superb conductor of Mozart declared himself last night at the Festival Hall…. Mr Davis emerged as a conductor ripe for greatness." Neville Cardus in The Guardian