Word: beecham
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Most indispensable of these whippers-into-shape, however, was a bouncing, imperial-bearded British oldster, Sir Thomas Beecham, who has for many years served as Covent Garden's artistic director, England's No. 1 maestro (and one of the six or seven most eminent in the world), Conductor Beecham has been conducting opera and furiously fostering operatic activity for nearly a generation. He has lost fortunes on it, has fed it generously to hungry audiences and stuffed it down less eager throats. A pioneer in presenting new works, he has given Britishers their first taste of more...
Born in 1879, son °of a wealthy British pill manufacturer (Beecham's Pills: "Worth a Guinea a Box"), hearty Sir Thomas got an early start waving a baton over orchestras and operatic casts. In 1906 he founded the New Symphony Orchestra (now the Royal Albert Hall Orchestra), and in the next three years doggedly conducted a series of Queen's Hall concerts despite discouragingly small public response. In 1911 he was instrumental in bringing the Imperial Russian Ballet to London, two years later combined it with a season of Russian opera. Many English composers...
LORD BERNERS : THE TRIUMPH OF NEPTUNE (London Philharmonic; Conductor Sir Thomas Beecham; Columbia: 4 parts). Trickily instrumented, clever suite originally designed for one of Choreographer Balanchine's concoctions...
...blindness, he was still one of the least appreciated of eminent modern composers. Though his works had been performed off & on in Germany, the French, among whom he spent his most productive years, had ignored him. In 1899 Delius himself arranged a concert in London; in 1929 Sir Thomas Beecham had organized a six-day Delius Festival, which the composer attended in a wheel chair. But his opera, Koanga, had waited more than 35 years for its British premiere. His masterpieces, the Mass of Life and the opera, A Village Romeo and Juliet, had received only a half-dozen hearings...
...entirely confident of his position as a great musician, he is very appreciative of appreciation, collects, reads and rereads every small item that is written about him in the most provincial newspapers. On the subject of his interpreters he is diplomatic, has indiscriminately praised Conductors Koussevitzky, Beecham, Werner Janssen and his countryman Robert Kajanus. He has a comforting motto: "Better have it played badly or wrong than...