A wonderful Beecham story (perhaps apochryphal), as quoted in Harold
Schonberg's "The Great Conductors":

   "He also generally conducted from memory, once in a while with
    disastrous results.  He himself used to tell, with great glee, of
    a concert he gave with Alfred Cortot as piano soloist.  Cortot's
    memory was notoriously unreliable, and he had a grievous lapse in
    the finale of the concerto.  Both Cortot and Beecham maneuvered,
    but were unable to come together. `We started with the Beethoven,
    and I kept up with Cortot through the Grieg, Schumann, Bach and
    Tchaikovsky, and then he hit on one I didn't know, so I stopped
    dead.'"

Bruce