Sir Thomas Beecham, 2nd Baronet, CH (29 April 1879 – 8 March 1961) was an English conductor and organizer known for his work with the London Philharmonic and Royal Philharmonic orchestras. He also worked closely with the Liverpool Philharmonic and Hallé orchestras. From the early 1900s until his death, Beecham played a major role in shaping Britain’s musical culture. The BBC noted that he was Britain’s first internationally recognized conductor.
Born into a wealthy industrial family, Beecham began his career as a conductor in 1899. He used money from his family to support opera productions from the 1910s until the start of World War II. He staged performances at theaters such as Covent Garden, Drury Lane, and His Majesty’s Theatre, featuring international singers, his own orchestra, and a wide range of musical works. He introduced several operas to England, including Richard Strauss’s Elektra, Salome, and Der Rosenkavalier, as well as three operas by Frederick Delius.
Beecham worked with his younger colleague, Malcolm Sargent, to start the London Philharmonic. He led its first performance at the Queen’s Hall in 1932. In the 1940s, he spent three years in the United States, where he was the music director of the Seattle Symphony and conducted at the Metropolitan Opera. After returning to Britain, he founded the Royal Philharmonic in 1946 and led it until his death in 1961.
Beecham’s musical choices were varied, and he often performed works by composers who were not widely known in Britain. He helped bring attention to composers such as Delius and Berlioz, whose music had been overlooked. He also frequently performed works by Haydn, Schubert, Sibelius, and Mozart, whom he admired most.
Biography
Beecham was born in St Helens, Lancashire (now part of Merseyside), in a house next to the Beecham's Pills laxative factory, which was started by his grandfather, Thomas Beecham. His parents were Joseph Beecham, the older son of Thomas, and Josephine, who was born into the Burnett family. In 1885, when the family business was doing well financially, Joseph Beecham moved his family to a large house in Ewanville, Huyton, near Liverpool. Their old home was later torn down to make space for an expansion of the pill factory.
Beecham studied at Rossall School from 1892 to 1897. After that, he wanted to study music in Germany, but his father refused. Instead, Beecham went to Wadham College, Oxford, to study Classics. He did not enjoy university life and asked his father for permission to leave Oxford in 1898. He practiced piano but had difficulty because of his small hands and a wrist injury in 1904, which ended any chance of becoming a solo pianist. He studied composition with teachers in Liverpool, London, and Paris. He taught himself how to conduct.
Beecham first conducted in public in St. Helens in October 1899 with a group of local musicians and players from the Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra and the Hallé in Manchester. A month later, he replaced the famous conductor Hans Richter at a concert by the Hallé to celebrate Joseph Beecham's appointment as mayor of St Helens. Soon after, Joseph Beecham secretly sent his wife to a mental hospital. Thomas and his older sister Emily helped get their mother released and made their father pay £4,500 each year in alimony. Because of this, Joseph Beecham cut off Thomas and Emily from the family fortune. Beecham was not close to his father for ten years.
Beecham's first job as a conductor was in 1902 at the Shakespeare Theatre in Clapham, where he led a performance of The Bohemian Girl for the Imperial Grand Opera Company. He was hired as an assistant conductor for a tour and was assigned to lead four other operas, including Carmen and Pagliacci. A writer about Beecham called the company "grandly named but clearly not well organized." Beecham's performance of Carmen featured Zélie de Lussan, a well-known singer in the role. He also wrote music during these years but focused more on conducting.
In 1906, Beecham was invited to lead the New Symphony Orchestra, a new group of 46 musicians, in a series of concerts at Bechstein Hall in London. Throughout his career, Beecham often chose to perform music he liked, even if it was not popular with audiences. When he first met with his new orchestra, he suggested works by composers few people knew, such as Étienne Méhul, Nicolas Dalayrac, and Ferdinando Paer. During this time, Beecham discovered the music of Frederick Delius, which he loved deeply and continued to associate with for the rest of his life.
Beecham quickly realized that to compete with the two main London orchestras, the Queen's Hall Orchestra and the London Symphony Orchestra (LSO), his group needed more musicians and to perform in larger venues. From October 1907 to 1909, Beecham and the expanded New Symphony Orchestra held concerts at the Queen's Hall. He paid little attention to ticket sales, and his programs were described as "even more likely to turn people away than they would today." The main pieces of his first concert with the orchestra included d'Indy's La forêt enchantée, Smetana's Šárka, and Lalo's Symphony in G minor. Beecham always liked the last piece and conducted it again more than fifty years later.
In 1908, Beecham and the New Symphony Orchestra ended their partnership because they disagreed about how the orchestra should be managed. Under the "deputy system," musicians could send substitutes to rehearsals or concerts if they had better-paying jobs elsewhere. Beecham opposed this system, just as Henry Wood had done in the Queen's Hall Orchestra. The New Symphony Orchestra continued without Beecham and later became the Royal Albert Hall Orchestra.
In 1909, Beecham created the Beecham Symphony Orchestra. He did not take players from other established orchestras but instead hired musicians from theatre bands, local music groups, hotel ensembles, and music schools. The average age of his players was 25, and some of them later became famous, such as Albert Sammons, Lionel Tertis, Eric Coates, and Eugene Cruft.
Because Beecham often chose to perform music that did not attract audiences, his musical projects at this time lost money. During his time away from his father between 1899 and 1909, he had limited access to the Beecham family fortune. From 1907, he received an annual payment of £700 from his grandfather's will, and his mother helped fund some of his unprofitable concerts. It was not until 1909, when he was reconciled with his father, that Beecham could use the family fortune to support opera productions.
From 1910, with his father's financial support, Beecham began staging opera seasons at Covent Garden and other venues. In the early 20th century, opera stars were considered more important than conductors. Between 1910 and 1939, Beecham helped shift this balance of power.
In 1910, Beecham either conducted or organized 190 performances at Covent Garden and His Majesty's Theatre. His assistant conductors were Bruno Walter and Percy Pitt. During that year, he presented 34 different operas, most of which were new to London or rarely performed there. Beecham later admitted that some of the operas he chose were too obscure to attract audiences. During his 1910 season at His Majesty's Theatre, a competing group called the Grand Opera Syndicate also held performances at Covent Garden. That year, London had 273 total opera performances, far more than the public wanted. Of the 34 operas Beecham staged in 1910, only four were profitable: Richard Strauss's Elektra and Salome, which had their first performances in Britain, and The Tales of Hoffmann and Die Fledermaus.
In 1911 and 1912, the Beecham Symphony Orchestra performed for Sergei Diaghilev's Ballets Russes in London and Berlin, under the direction of Beecham and Pierre Monteux, Diaghilev's chief conductor. Beecham was praised for conducting Stravinsky's Petrushka with little notice and no rehearsal when Monteux was unavailable. In Berlin, Beecham and his orchestra were described by the press as an elite group, with the Berlin newspaper
Repertoire
The earliest composer whose music Beecham regularly performed was Handel, whom he called "the great international master of all time." He believed Handel wrote Italian music better than any Italian, French music better than any Frenchman, English music better than any Englishman, and, except for Bach, better than any other German. In his performances of Handel, Beecham ignored what he called "experts and teachers" who focused on strict rules. Instead, he followed Mendelssohn and Mozart in editing and changing Handel's scores to fit modern styles. At a time when Handel's operas were rarely known, Beecham knew them well enough to create three ballets, two other suites, and a piano concerto from them. He performed Handel's oratorio Solomon for the first time since the 18th century, using a version of the text edited by the conductor.
With Haydn, Beecham did not strictly follow historical versions of the music. He used 19th-century editions of the scores, avoided the harpsichord, and played the music in a romantic style. He recorded the twelve "London" symphonies and often included them in his concerts. Earlier Haydn works were not well known in the first half of the 20th century, but Beecham conducted several, including Symphony No. 40 and an early piano concerto. He included The Seasons in many of his performances and recorded it for EMI in 1956. In 1944, he added The Creation to his repertoire.
Beecham considered Mozart "the central point of European music" and treated his scores with more care than most others. He edited the incomplete Requiem, translated at least two of Mozart's great operas into English, and introduced audiences at Covent Garden to operas such as Così fan tutte, Der Schauspieldirektor, and Die Entführung aus dem Serail. He also regularly performed The Magic Flute, Don Giovanni, and The Marriage of Figaro. He believed Mozart's piano concertos were "the most beautiful compositions of their kind in the world" and played them many times with Betty Humby-Beecham and others.
Beecham had mixed feelings about 19th-century German music. He often criticized composers like Beethoven and Wagner but still conducted their works, sometimes with great success. He once said, "Wagner, though a tremendous genius, gorged music like a German who overeats. And Bruckner had no style at all." Despite his criticisms, Beecham conducted all of Beethoven's symphonies during his career and made recordings of several. He performed the Fourth Piano Concerto with pleasure, recording it with Arthur Rubinstein and the London Philharmonic Orchestra, but avoided the Emperor Concerto when possible.
Beecham was not known for his performances of Bach but chose an arrangement of Bach for his debut at the Metropolitan Opera. Later, he performed the Third Brandenburg Concerto in a memorial concert for Wilhelm Furtwängler, a performance described by The Times as "a travesty, albeit an invigorating one." In Brahms's music, Beecham was selective. He specialized in the Second Symphony but conducted the Third only occasionally, the First rarely, and the Fourth never. He did not mention any Brahms performances after 1909 in his memoirs.
Beecham was a great supporter of Wagner, even though he often criticized the composer's long and repetitive style. He conducted most of Wagner's major works, except Parsifal, which he presented at Covent Garden but never conducted himself. A Times critic noted that Beecham's Lohengrin had an Italian-like lyricism, and his Ring cycle was less heroic than other conductors' versions but still sang well from start to finish.
Richard Strauss had a lifelong supporter in Beecham, who introduced operas such as Elektra, Salome, and Der Rosenkavalier to England. Beecham included Ein Heldenleben in his repertoire from 1910 until his final year, with his last recording released shortly after his death. Other works by Strauss in his repertoire included Don Quixote, Till Eulenspiegel, and Don Juan, but not Also Sprach Zarathustra or Tod und Verklärung. Strauss honored Beecham by framing the first and last pages of the Elektra manuscript and presenting them to him.
The Académie du Disque Français said Beecham did more to promote French music abroad than any other French conductor. Berlioz was a major part of Beecham's repertoire, and he performed and recorded many of the composer's works during a time when they were rarely heard. Along with Sir Colin Davis, Beecham was called one of the two greatest modern interpreters of Berlioz's music. He chose French music in a varied way, avoiding Ravel but regularly performing Debussy. He also performed Bizet's works and those by composers like Delibes, Lalo, and Saint-Saëns. Many of his later French recordings were made in Paris with the Orchestre National de la Radiodiffusion Française. The orchestra's concertmaster called Beecham "a god" in 1957.
Of the more than two dozen operas in Verdi's canon, Beecham conducted eight: Il trovatore, La traviata, Aida, Don Carlos, Rigoletto, Un ballo in maschera, Otello, and Falstaff. He met Puccini in 1904 through the librettist Luigi Illica, who had written the libretto for Beecham's early attempt at an Italian opera. Beecham rarely conducted Madama Butterfly but performed Tosca, Turandot, and La bohème. His 1956 recording of La bohème, with Victoria de los Ángeles and Jussi Björling, remained popular and was voted the best operatic set in a 1967 critic survey.
Except
Recordings
The composer Richard Arnell wrote that Beecham preferred making records to giving concerts. He said that audiences sometimes distracted him during performances. He often noticed someone in the front row looking at him. However, the conductor and critic Trevor Harvey wrote in The Gramophone that studio recordings could not fully capture the excitement of Beecham performing live in a concert hall.
Beecham began making recordings in 1910. At that time, the sound recording method required orchestras to use only their main instruments, which had to be placed close to the recording horn. His first recordings, for HMV, were parts of Offenbach’s The Tales of Hoffmann and Johann Strauss’s Die Fledermaus. In 1915, Beecham started recording for the Columbia Graphophone Company. Electrical recording technology, introduced in 1925–26, allowed full orchestras to be recorded with better sound quality. Beecham quickly used this new method. Because 12-inch 78-rpm discs could only hold about four minutes of music, longer pieces had to be split into shorter parts. Beecham was not opposed to recording in pieces. For example, his famous 1932 recording of Chabrier’s España was made in two separate sessions three weeks apart. Over the years, Beecham recorded many of his favorite works multiple times, using improved technology each time.
From 1926 to 1932, Beecham made more than 70 discs. These included an English version of Gounod’s Faust and the first of three recordings of Handel’s Messiah. In 1933, he began recording with the London Philharmonic Orchestra for Columbia, creating over 150 discs. These included music by composers such as Mozart, Rossini, Berlioz, Wagner, Handel, Beethoven, Brahms, Debussy, and Delius. One of his most important pre-war recordings was the first complete version of Mozart’s The Magic Flute, recorded with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra for HMV in 1937–38. This set was described by Alan Blyth in Gramophone magazine in 2006 as having "a legendary status." In 1936, during a tour in Germany with the London Philharmonic Orchestra, Beecham conducted the world’s first orchestral recording on magnetic tape. This recording took place in Ludwigshafen, the home of BASF, the company that developed the process.
After moving to the United States and later, Beecham recorded for American Columbia Records and RCA Victor. His RCA recordings included major works that he did not re-record later, such as Beethoven’s Fourth Symphony, Sibelius’s Sixth Symphony, and Mendelssohn’s Reformation Symphonies. Some RCA recordings were only available in the United States, including Mozart’s Symphony No. 27, K199, the overtures to Smetana’s The Bartered Bride and Mozart’s La clemenza di Tito, the Sinfonia from Bach’s Christmas Oratorio, a 1947–48 complete recording of Gounod’s Faust, and an RPO studio version of Sibelius’s Second Symphony. Beecham’s RCA recordings that were released in both the United States and Europe included his celebrated 1956 complete recording of Puccini’s La bohème and a revised version of Handel’s Messiah. The La bohème recording is still highly recommended by reviewers, and the Messiah set was described by Gramophone as "an irresistible outrage … huge fun."
For the Columbia label, Beecham recorded his last or only versions of many works by Delius, including A Mass of Life, Appalachia, North Country Sketches, An Arabesque, Paris, and Eventyr. Other Columbia recordings from the early 1950s included Beethoven’s Eroica, Pastoral, and Eighth Symphonies, Mendelssohn’s Italian Symphony, and the Brahms Violin Concerto with Isaac Stern.
From his return to England after World War II until his final recordings in 1959, Beecham continued working with HMV and British Columbia, which had merged to form EMI. Starting in 1955, his EMI recordings in London were made in stereo. He also recorded in Paris, using his own RPO and the Orchestra National de la Radiodiffusion Française. However, the Paris recordings were in mono until 1958. For EMI, Beecham recorded two complete operas in stereo: Die Entführung aus dem Serail and Carmen. His last recordings were made in Paris in December 1959. Beecham’s EMI recordings have been reissued many times on LP and CD. In 2011, to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Beecham’s death, EMI released 34 CDs of his recordings from the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries. These included works by Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms, Wagner, Richard Strauss, and Delius, as well as many of the French "lollipops" he was known for.
Relations with others
Beecham's relationships with other British conductors were not always friendly. Sir Henry Wood believed Beecham was arrogant and felt jealous of his success. Sir Adrian Boult, who was very careful in his actions, found Beecham to be unpleasant as a person and a musician. Sir John Barbirolli did not trust Beecham. Sir Malcolm Sargent worked with Beecham to start the London Philharmonic and was a friend, but Beecham made clever but unkind comments about him. For example, Beecham once said that Herbert von Karajan, who cared about his image, was like a "musical Malcolm Sargent." Beecham had good relationships with many foreign conductors. He did not get along well with Arturo Toscanini, but he supported Wilhelm Furtwängler, admired Pierre Monteux, helped train Rudolf Kempe to take over the RPO, and was respected by Fritz Reiner, Otto Klemperer, and Karajan.
Although Beecham spoke in a slow, grand manner, he remained connected to his Lancastrian roots. He once said, "In my county, we are a bit rough around the edges, but we have a friendly, warm way about us that helps us deal with many problems. However, in Yorkshire, people are so stubborn that it is hard to work with them."
Beecham was often quoted by others. In 1929, a music journal editor wrote, "There are countless stories about Sir Thomas Beecham. Musicians often talk about him, and when they share these stories, they try to copy his way of speaking." A book titled Beecham Stories was published in 1978, filled with clever sayings and stories about him. Some quotes are believed to have been said by Beecham, while others may have been made by people like Arnold Bax, Winston Churchill, or Neville Cardus, who admitted to creating some stories himself. Reliable quotes attributed to Beecham include: "A musicologist is someone who can read music but cannot hear it"; his rule, "For the public, the most important things in a good performance are that the orchestra starts and ends together; what happens in between does not matter much"; and his comment at his 70th birthday celebration, after hearing messages from Strauss, Stravinsky, and Sibelius: "Nothing from Mozart?"
Beecham did not care about simple tasks like writing letters and was not careful with other people's belongings. Once, 2,000 unopened letters were found among his papers. Havergal Brian sent Beecham three musical scores hoping they would be performed. One of them, the Second English Suite, was never returned and is now believed to be lost.
Honours and commemorations
In 1916, Beecham was knighted. Later that same year, he became the head of his family's baronetcy after his father passed away. In 1938, President Albert Lebrun of France gave him the Légion d'honneur. In 1955, Beecham received the Order of the White Rose of Finland. He was a Commendatore of the Order of the Crown of Italy and became a Member of the Order of the Companions of Honour in the 1957 Queen's Birthday Honours. He was an honorary Doctor of Music at the universities of Oxford, London, Manchester, and Montreal.
A play titled Beecham, written by Caryl Brahms and Ned Sherrin, celebrates the conductor and uses many stories about him. The first performance in 1979 featured Timothy West as the main character. The play was later adapted for television, with West starring and members of the Hallé Orchestra performing music connected to Beecham.
In 1980, the Royal Mail included Beecham's image on a 13½p postage stamp. This stamp was part of a series showing British conductors, including Wood, Sargent, and Barbirolli. The Sir Thomas Beecham Society keeps Beecham's legacy alive through its website and by sharing historic recordings.
In 2012, Beecham was chosen for the first Gramophone magazine "Hall of Fame" list.
Books by Beecham
Beecham's published books include the following:
- John Fletcher (The Romanes Lecture for 1956). Oxford: Clarendon Press. 1956. OCLC 315928398.
- A Mingled Chime – Leaves from an Autobiography. London: Hutchinson. 1959. OCLC 3672200.
- Frederick Delius. London: Hutchinson. 1959. OCLC 730041374.
The last book was reprinted in 1975 by Severn House, London. This edition included an introduction by Felix Aprahamian and a discography by Malcolm Walker. The ISBN for this edition is 0-7278-0073-6.