Ah, dear old Sir Tommy, always there with a warm-hearted bon mot about his colleagues, particularly those less inclined than he was to wallow in the glorious old tradition of past musical greatness. What a delightful old buffer he was.
Indeed Mr. Barrett, and neither always old nor always buffer:
Thomas Beecham began to be definitely known about the year 1906. From boyhood he had saturated himself in music, in England and on the Continent. He had perfected his fine memory, and had founded at least one Orchestral Society at Huyton, Liverpool, where once he had taken Richter's place at a concert that Richter was suddenly unable to attend: this was about the year 1899, when Beecham was nineteen or twenty. For a while he had toured the country with the Kelson Truman Opera Company, and he had experimented with composition, writing three operas.
The New Symphony Orchestra was founded by Beecham in 1906. With this he first won fame, until such time as he parted from the players to establish another London Orchestra, now under the name of the "Beecham Symphony Orchestra." These were the years leading directly to his great work for opera. The programmes were unorthodox, revealing the conductor's personal tastes and high ambitions. We therefore give a list of some of the pieces played in 1907 and 1908:
Edouard Lalo: Symphony in G minor.
Vincent d'Indy: "The enchanted Forest."
Smetana: Symphonic Poem, "Sarka."
Charles Wood: Symphonic Variations on an Irish air.
Frederick Delius: "Paris: the Song of a great City."
Dr. Williams: "Norfolk Rhapsody."
Joseph Holbrook: "Queen Mab."
Dvorak: "The Golden-spinning Wheel."
W.H. Bell: " Love among the ruins."
Delius: "Brigg Fair."
Holbrook: "The Viking."
Delius: "Over the hills and far away."
Delius: "Appalachia."
Holbrook: "Byron."
Intermingled with the above were works by Dvorak, works by Mozart, and passages from Wagner, etc.
The choral part of Joseph Holbrook's "
Byron" was sung by the City Choral Society from Birmingham. Thomas Beecham was trying to establish himself in that town in the year 1908; and as the City Choral Society was then in need of a conductor, he filled the post for a time, It was at one of their concerts that we first heard him perform. No impression remains in our mind, except that Beecham conducted without baton, and that in a shaky moment during a piece he called out directions to the players in a loud voice. We recollect that included in the programme was the Overture to Méhul's "
Le jeune Henri."
Between the years 1908 and 1916, Thomas Beecham seems to us to have had little apparent sympathy with what we call the "pure" or "absolute" in art. The sublimity of self-contained music seemed to elude him, unless it were of the kind made by Mozart for his slow movements, where always Beecham was an exquisite performer. His bent of mind in those years was operatic; and in orchestral music he appeared constantly to desire a programme.
A German critic, writing in the year 1912, when Beecham visited Berlin with his orchestra, said: "The true domain of Mr. Beecham lies in the theatrical opera, where we must meet again this temperamental and active artist."
(Courtesy S.G.E.)
