Musicians - Thomas Beecham

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	Musicians - Thomas Beecham

Sir Thomas Beecham, 2nd Baronet, CH (29 April, 1879– 8 March 1961) was a British conductor. He founded several British orchestras including the New Symphony Orchestra, the London Philharmonic Orchestra and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. Beecham was the most prominent British conductor of the early to mid-twentieth century to be based in Britain (Leopold Stokowski was also British-born and perhaps even more prominent but made his career in the United States).

Biography

Beecham was born in St. Helens, Lancashire, England. His father, Sir Joseph Beecham, 1st Baronet (1848–1916), was a wealthy patent pill manufacturer and civic leader, who had been awarded a baronetcy for continuing the work of his father Thomas Beecham (1820–1907), the inventor of "Beecham's Pills".

His relations with fellow British conductors were seldom cordial. Sir Henry Wood regarded him as an upstart and was envious of his success; the scrupulous Sir Adrian Boult was not in sympathy with him as a man or a musician; Sir Malcolm Sargent worked with him in founding the London Philharmonic, but was the subject of many witty but unkind digs from the older man - for example, he described Herbert von Karajan as "a kind of musical Malcolm Sargent". Sir John Barbirolli regarded Beecham as unreliable. On the other hand, Beecham's relations with foreign conductors were often excellent. He did not get on with Arturo Toscanini, but he liked and encouraged Wilhelm Furtwängler and later Rudolf Kempe, and was admired by Fritz Reiner.

Repertoire

The earliest composer whose music Beecham regularly performed was Handel. Even by the standards of his day Beecham took an unscholarly approach to Handel's scores, cutting, reordering and re-orchestrating wholesale. In defence of this it may be noted that, first, much of the music revamped by Beecham was not otherwise heard at all in those days and, secondly, except by the out-and-out purist, his arrangements are widely regarded as delicious even now. With Haydn, too, Beecham was far from an authenticist, not that he extensively re-orchestrated (apart from eliminating the harpsichord) but his legato style with 'hairpin' swells was far from today's more sober approach.

For Beecham, Mozart was the high point of music, and the conductor treated the composer's scores with more deference than he gave most others (nevertheless, he touched up the orchestration of even the Jupiter symphony here and there).

Beecham's attitude to Beethoven was ambivalent. He lost no opportunity to make rude remarks about the music, but conducted all the symphonies at one time or another, and recorded Nos 2, 3, 4, 6, 7 and 8. A fine live recording of the Missa Solemnis has recently been published.

Of 19th century composers, Berlioz is probably the one who was closest to Beecham's heart, and in an age when the composer's works were far from over-exposed Beecham presented most of them and recorded many. It is arguable that the only conductor to do more to bring Berlioz before the musical public is another Englishman, Sir Colin Davis.

Beecham was a first-rate Wagner conductor, despite a certain disdain for the composer's excessive length and repetitiousness ("We've been rehearsing for two hours - and we're still playing the same bloody tune!" (Charles Reid, "Thomas Beecham", 1961). He was also a master of Richard Strauss’s music, acknowledged by the composer.

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