Word: beecham
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...Will you kindly do something for me? Take your Art writer out of that "smaller office on the Northwest (or Montana) corner of the TIME & LIFE Building" [TIME Letters, Nov. 6], and install your Music writer, who reported on Sir Thomas Beecham's rendition of Mozart's Symphony No. 41: ". . . the strings were firmer and not quite so luscious as U.S. strings, not so dry and nasal as the French" [TIME...
Testy old (71) Sir Thomas Beecham was in a mellow mood. With the 105 members of his Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, he had cleared the brambles of the U.S.'s new Security Act without a scratch, while German and Italian musicians were having a time of it. (Said Sir Thomas blandly: "We're all British, thank God.") There was a deeper reason for his satisfaction: he was set to face U.S. audiences with an orchestra of his own-an enterprise "I have undertaken in a becoming spirit of modesty and humility." In fact, beamed Sir Thomas, he had come...
Conductor Beecham's crooning modesty did not come from any qualms about the quality of his orchestra. As orchestras go, his Royal Philharmonic is almost brand-new (though the Royal Philharmonic Society, which sponsors it, can boast that it commissioned a tenth symphony from Beethoven, which he never lived to write). But Sir Thomas had painstakingly collected his orchestra himself after World War II-"because there was no existing British orchestra of a high enough standard to maintain my reputation." After five years of drilling and polishing, he was confident that the Royal Philharmonic was one that he could...
Gold in the Garden. In Berlioz' overture Le Corsair, they heard all the noise that Berlioz' bounding score calls for, and marveled at the expertly modulated brasses, blended and balanced instead of blaring. In Mozart's Symphony No. 41, a Beecham specialty, the strings were firmer and not quite so luscious as U.S. strings, not so dry and nasal as the French. The woodwinds, clearly articulate, played with a tone of pure gold. It was a glossily polished performance-for some a disappointment because of its fussiness. But all in all, through Sibelius' tone poem Tapiola...
...been quieted he told of how the orchestra had learned "sweet, soothing, and soporific" pieces for just such an eventuality. He said the orchestra called them lollipops. They played Lollipop No. 2, "On First Hearing the Cuckoo in Spring" by Delius. Afterwards, when the audience began noisily cheering Beecham again held up his hand for quiet and announced that "members of the orchestra have raised eyebrows. They have played Lollipop No. 2 and you are still awake." It was not until he shouted above the noise, "I will NOT play another selection," that everyone went home...