AVAILABILITY
www.sonyclassical.co.uk
Sony’s splendid exploration
of Beecham’s legacy continues with a
disc that Graham Melville-Mason subtitles
in his notes Beecham and the Czechs
and Russians. The plural in the
case of the former includes details
of his performances of Smetana (a Covent
Garden The Bartered Bride with
Tauber is currently available) and Weinberger,
of whose Under the Spreading Chestnut
Tree he was, as was Barbirolli,
very fond. Though he never appears to
have conducted the complete Ma Vlast
cycle he did programme Vltava,
Šárka and From Bohemia’s
Woods and Fields.
Of all post-Dvořákian composers
it would, I suppose, have been
most exciting to have heard him conduct
Novák – whose In the Tatra
Mountains would have been ideal
for him. But we must make do with what
remains.
The Symphonic
Variations was something of
a test piece for British conductors
on disc. Henry Wood’s recording was
no mere run-through but Beecham’s proves
to be imbued with greater vivacity and
subtlety and characterised with the
RPO’s very special instrumental resources.
That said Beecham omits variations 13
and 20, a minor but still noticeable
deficit. The performance is genial and
well coloured with moments of excellence
in No. 12 for leader David McCallum,
father of the actor of the same name
(the Zimbalists are not the only violin-father
and actor-son dynasty) and also for
the principal trombonist, Sidney Langston,
in Number 15. And the climax is especially
well judged – it’s a pity the variations
aren’t separately tracked here.
Beecham’s enthusiasm
for Russian music was marked. The Balakirev
Symphony in C recording is a Beecham
staple of the catalogue and was taken
into the studies the year after this
recording of Tamara. Beecham
conducted Tamara in the concert
hall and in the ballet pit (he’d first
introduced it in 1912) and his long
and vivid experience shows in this recording,
made fully forty-two years later. Jack
Brymer is on delectable form as he coaxes
some folksy inflexions (try 5.30) and
there’s zestful and idiomatic rhythm,
crisp accents and a finely dramatic
mid-section, with superb playing all
round. Beecham keeps a fine control
of the structure, which is never allowed
to sag. As with Tamara Beecham
had affection for Le Coq d’Or.
He conducted the opera in 1919 and 1942
but the orchestral suite turned up consistently
over the years. Those who know his Scheherazade
recording will know to expect colour
and vivacity, imagination and pictorial
brush strokes. It’s a shame that there
is a 16 bar cut in the opening movement
but there is compensation enough in
the string and wind tenderness, as well
as the glower of the brass and ultimately
the leisurely unfolding of the wind
lines and the trippingly witty strings.
The second movement King Dodon on
the Battlefield is notable not
only for the sheer subtlety of the martial
music but also for Beecham’s silken
glazed strings and the exploratory sonorities
of the third movement, the most consistently
exciting in terms of Rimsky’s exploitation
of eastern and western musics. Though
he does slightly cut the opening of
the Bridal Procession fourth movement
there’s still plenty of benevolent swagger
to go round.
This is a well-documented
and cannily programmed entrant into
the happily formidably well-equipped
Beecham catalogue – long may it continue.
Jonathan Woolf
Royal Philharmonic Orchestra/Sir Thomas Beecham
