Word: beecham
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Mirella Freni, Luciano Pavarotti, Berlin Philharmonic, Herbert von Karajan, conductor; London; 2 LPs; $11.96). The LP era has had three recordings of Bohème good enough to be called great. The first two were the Toscanini (with Licia Albanese and Jan Peerce as Mimi and Rodolfo) and the Beecham (Victoria de los Angeles and Jussi Bjoerling), both still available in low-priced reissues. Here is the third, with the unpredictable Karajan sculpting the orchestral part with an irresistible flow befitting the Toscanini approach and a touching songfulness that Beecham might have applauded. The bella voce cast is the finest...
Under Solti, Covent Garden had its most dynamic presence since the days of Sir Thomas Beecham in the 1930s. Aside from Karajan at Vienna, no other opera house was headed by a musician of Solti's caliber. When he took over, Solti proclaimed that "I have only one desire: to make Covent Garden the best opera house in the world." By the time he left in 1971, he had almost succeeded, and there was no one to dispute his right to the knighthood bestowed by the Queen a year later, shortly after he had become a British citizen...
...earthy piety based on prodigious musical insight and a troth-like pledge between him and the composer. Here are some of his finest concerto recordings-notably the Brahms with Hamilton Harty (1928), the Beethoven with Bruno Walter (1932), the Prokofiev First, Mozart Fourth and the Mendelssohn with Sir Thomas Beecham (1933-35) and, at long last on LP, the Beethoven Violin and Piano Sonatas Nos. 5 and 10 with Artur Schnabel (1948). Though the sound is monaural, it has been restored lovingly and retains much of the warmth that characterized the best of Europe's prewar 78-r.p.m. shellacs...
...BILL BEECHAM Pineville...
...Virgil Thomson is the only man In the world who can keep me up until four in the morning." The late Sir Thomas Beecham's remark was a tribute to the fact that Thomson, one of the foremost U.S. composers, composes sentences just as brilliantly as he does music. He has been as familiar to the music public for his books (The State of Music) and his distinguished music reviews in the New York Herald Tribune (1940-54) as for works like the opera Four Saints in Three Acts or the film score for Louisiana Story, Whether in words...