Rudolf Kempe was born into a family in which music played little part, but when he was six he began to have piano lessons, taking up the violin when he was twelve and also the oboe; his teacher was Johann König, the first oboe of the Dresden Staatskapelle. Two years later he enrolled at the Music High School in Dresden, where he continued to study with König as well as with Fritz Busch, Karl Schütte, Theodor Blumer and Kurt Striegel, and learnt the accordion as well as his other instruments. Having been engaged as the first oboist in the orchestra of the Dortmund Opera in 1928, two months later Kempe accepted the same position in the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra (also the orchestra of the Leipzig Opera), in which he played under many distinguished conduc...