★★★★☆
Some maestros take themselves too seriously. Sir Thomas never did. A fount of wit and self-mockery he made rehearsals fun and performance an inspiration. Adored in Britain, he was received warily abroad although Wilhelm Furtwängler accorded him deep respect and even Toscanini had nice things to say. As for general reputation, Sir Thomas was a master manipulator of media. One night in Liverpool, he invited leading journalists to a champagne reception at the Adelphi, where he proceeded to unscrew light-bulbs and drop them one by one into the hotel lobby from the top floor. The headlines wrote themselves.
This box of 35 CDs contains many of his famous lollipops — encores so light they are gone before you notice — and several of his unsurpassed triumphs. Never one for pomp and circumstance, he abjured Elgar, disliked Vaughan Williams and thought even less of their successor (“he’s not Great Britten, is he?”). Sophorific Frederick Delius was his man and you will never hear that crabby chord-accountant more convincingly represented than within this abundant box.
Mozart he delivered with unmatchable fizz; even the Jupiter sounds jolly. Handel’s Solomon is wise beyond words. Beecham’s Beethoven and Brahms are on the lugubrious side. Wagner he hardly recorded. French music was his metier. I doubt you will ever hear a more exciting Franck D minor Symphony, a Lalo G minor or the Berlioz Fantastique and his Carmen (De Los Angeles, Gedda, Micheau) ought to be proclaimed a world heritage site. If I have withheld one star from the rating above it is for the variable consistency of EMI’s sound quality.
The serious and epic side of Beecham is manifest in his November 1955 recording of the Sibelius seventh symphony, a work that still proves unfathomable to many Finn conductors. Other famed English conductors have made an Eton mess of it. In Beecham’s hands, Sibelius 7 is the meaning of life itself, clear as ice and deep as the Baltic Sea. You will listen in open-mouthed wonder.
