Word: barbirollis
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...arrival is not likely to mean any big housecleaning of the BBC orchestra. He has frequently guest-conducted it, and declared himself well pleased. Most English critics rank it as one of Britain's top three (the other two: Sir Thomas Beecham's Royal Philharmonic, Barbirolli's Hallé). If it has not won the prestige in Britain that Arturo Toscanini's NBC Symphony has achieved in the U.S., that is mainly because, as one British critic put it, "the BBC has not had a Toscanini." But in 20 years the BBC has become a solid...
...directors of the government-subsidized BBC had searched for more than a year for a conductor who would take the job. They had dangled the ?10,000 salary before Sir John Barbirolli, but he preferred to stick with his beloved Halle Orchestra in Manchester for less money. Brilliant young Czech Conductor Rafael Kubelik was tempted, but he turned it down to take over the Chicago Symphony (TIME, Jan. 9). After six months of negotiation, Sir Malcolm had accepted on condition that he could spend half his time free-lancing at home & abroad and conducting the roof-raising choral concerts which...
What nettled the doyen of British critics most was a performance of Rossini's Semiramide Overture by the Berlin Philharmonic under Sir John Barbirolli. "No really musical person," groused Newman, "would leave his comfortable home . . . specifically to hear this . . . But bring, at great expense, a German orchestra all the way from Berlin to play this negligible bit of Italian music in the capital of Scotland, and an English conductor all the way from Manchester to conduct it, and apparently it becomes, by some magical transformation . . . a 'festival' work and we trudge all the way to Edinburgh...
When Conductor (and Cellist) Barbirolli and his oboe-playing British wife Evelyn Rothwell packed aboard a Portuguese freighter in New York five years ago, his musical stock was ankle low. At 37, a youngster as conductors go, he had made the tactical mistake of following Arturo Toscanini to a podium that had taken all of the Maestro's fire and ice to control. As boss of the proud, 106-year-old New York Philharmonic-Symphony, Barbirolli had neither Toscanini's precise beat nor his fearsome bearing. The musicians were soon in a state of anarchy. Barbirolli left unhappily...
...with his Manhattan misfortunes "over the dam," Conductor Barbirolli says, "I'm on top of the world." He likes Manchester: "There is not much social life. It gives you time to work." He concentrates on young people, tries to convince them "that it's jazz that's sissy and the real he-man stuff is Beethoven and Bach." One-third of his audiences are 18 or under. Says Barbirolli: "If Frank Sinatra can have his bobby-sox brigade...