Word: beecham
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Conductor Sargent's 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...
...orchestra, he composed a Concerto for Toys and Orchestra, then flew to New York and recorded it. On the side, he found time to inaugurate a competition in composition and another in instrument playing for pupils in the Dallas public schools. And one night, with visiting Conductor Sir Thomas Beecham on the podium, he sat down at the piano and gave a workmanlike performance of Brahms's Piano Concerto No. 1. Dallas music lovers, whom Hendl has diplomatically described as "extremely perceptive," were delighted...
Arriving in Manhattan, Britain's crusty old (70) Conductor Sir Thomas Beecham had undergone no sea change. He planned a concert and lecture tour in the U.S. and Canada, including four stops in Texas, where, he intoned, "Western culture has arrived at its highest peak." Having disposed of these kind words, he turned on modern classical music: "A continuous succession of promissory notes. Composers are always promising but only keep on promising." What about bebop? Snapped Sir Thomas: " What the devil is that...
...Mayfair's fashionable St. Mark's Church on North Audley Street where the ceremony took place, musical bigwigs like Sir Thomas Beecham rubbed elbows with Britain's royal dukes & duchesses and 200 stout Yorkshiremen from the village of Harewood, who had come up to town in Sunday best to salute their young landlord. As the bridal automobile swept away from the St. James's Palace reception that followed, a single tiny Cinderella-like silver slipper could be seen bobbing in the dust behind...
...reason to plead guilty. Said he with a sigh: "You don't come to Edinburgh to hear Brahms's Second Symphony. If you're the type who goes to a festival, you've heard it. But you do come to hear the Royal Philharmonic under Beecham, or the Berlin, or the Vienna Philharmonic, or the Concertgebouw. It seems to me that what is played here is less important than who plays it. Whatever he thinks of it, the festival-goer certainly gets a good idea of the state of orchestra-playing in Europe and what...