Word: beecham
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...plot filled in either by stage gimmickry or by Sellars' own entertaining, if self-conscious, narration. He uses good commercial recordings of the works, and provides surprisingly good reproduction for them. The cutting is drastic, though, and will disturb those who know the music too well. Sir Thomas Beecham used to complain of the "bleeding chunks of Wagner" played by symphony orchestras as excerpts; Sellars' adaptations are hamburger meat...
...silliness on Person to Person is partially camouflaged by his formidable telegenic image: his omnipresent cigarette and theatrical voice lend dignity to everything he says. The words themselves, unfortunately, are banalities. In interviews with John and Jacqueline Kennedy, Marilyn Monroe, Agnes de Mille, Maria Callas, Sir Thomas Beecham, Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall, he rarely extracts a witticism and never an insight. "Have you opened all your wedding gifts?" he asks the newlywed Kennedys in 1953. He then goes on to stock questions that permit the young Senator to rattle off his policy positions by rote. Murrow's notion...
...armed bandits from Dublin to Sydney. "We couldn't do business in Australia without that Dublin plant," says Bill O'Donnell, Bally's president, "because Ireland qualifies for special treatment on tariffs there." Although Keating is concentrating his efforts on the U.S., he recently lured Beecham Group Ltd., the big British pharmaceutical firm, to invest in a 50-acre site near Shannon Airport. (Britain remains Ireland's main trading partner; more than 200 British plants prosper in Ireland.) The products shipped from foreign-owned Irish plants, ranging from cardiac pacemakers to computers, transformers to cranes...
Mozart: Symphonies Nos. 29, 31, 34, 35, 36, 38-41, Overtures to Don Giovanni and The Marriage of Figaro (London Philharmonic; Sir Thomas Beecham, conductor; Turnabout/Vox; 5 LPs; $19.95). In his later years, the doughty Sir Thomas sometimes conducted Mozart in a cantankerous, self-indulgent way. But during the 1930s, when most of these London Philharmonic recordings were made, he displayed superb poise, control and mastery of the peculiar blend of fire and ice that lie at the heart of Mozart's music. Beecham's recording then of the euphoniously ethereal No. 39 in E-Flat Major...
Berlioz: Symphonie Fantastique (Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Sir Georg Solti conducting; London, $6.98; Amsterdam Concertgebouw Orchestra, Colin Davis conducting; Philips, $7.98). One of the fantastic things about this symphony is the number of superior recorded performances it has had over the years. Argenta, Beecham, Munch, Van Beinum and Ozawa are among the many who have mastered this wildly prophetic score, completed in 1830, only three years after Beethoven's death. Here are two new versions, both by virtuoso conductors and virtuoso orchestras, that go to the top of the list. To choose between them is difficult. Davis' elegant approach...