Word: beecham
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...yielding soil of the fortune made from the sales of Britain's best-known laxative that the extraordinary personality of Sir Thomas Beecham, conductor, impresario and wit, has flowered and flourished. Although his access to the proceeds of that fortune has been progressively limited, it has been an important factor in the development, not only of his truly remarkable musical gifts, but also of all the extravagance, exuberance and effervescence of a rich and sensitive but irrepressible and boisterous nature. He is utterly free from cant and convention, and his fortunate combination of natural and material endowments has enabled...
CONFRONTED with such snippets from his extensive vituperative record, Beecham would characteristically tend to wave them away with a modest disclaimer. "I was a perfect child," he confides to one biographer, "never spoke, never cried!" But in this pose-for Beecham can assume a pose quite naturally-he would no doubt choose to forget that his student days at Oxford came to a sudden end after 18 months and that the warden of Wadham College is then reported to have said, "Mr. Beecham! Your untimely departure has perhaps spared us the necessity of asking...
Fantastic stories about him abound, and Mr. Beecham is already well in process of becoming a legend in his own lifetime. Here is one fragment relating to a musical memory that is all but a miracle. Bending down to his orchestral leader just before an opera performance was about to begin, Beecham whispered. "We are playing Figaro tonight, are we not?" "Oh,no, Sir Thomas." said the leader in alarm, "it is Seraglio!" "My dear fellow, you amaze me!" said Beecham. With that, he closed the Figaro score on his desk and proceeded to conduct the whole of Seraglio from...
...Beecham cannot be dismissed merely as a brilliant swashbuckler or the self-constituted enfant terrible of music, for the Beecham legend stands on a rock of solid musical achievement. Most conductors specialize in symphonic music or opera, one or the other. Beecham specializes in both. What is more, he has probably forced through, against the odds, more performances of new or unknown works in both fields than any other two British conductors. He is, further, an impresario in the grand manner and tradition. He has given or raised vast sums of money for a multitude of large-scale musical undertakings...
Characteristically, Beecham has no doubts whatever about the quality of his conducting. Congratulated after a concert by Fellow Conductor Fritz Reiner for "a delightful evening spent with Mozart and Beecham," the sudden flash came back, "Why drag in Mozart...