Sir Thomas Beecham as he appeared in 1946. The photograph is by Yousuf Karsh (1908-2002).
I was just three months away from my 12th birthday when I first – and last – saw Sir Thomas Beecham conduct live in the flesh. It was in April 1960, and unknown to anyone including Sir Thomas this was to be his final appearance in London and his penultimate concert anywhere. I was too young and ignorant to comprehend the results he was obtaining with his virtuoso hand-picked Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, but I can very vividly remember the electrifying atmosphere, the prolonged roars of applause and, albeit only sketchily, the dynamic impact of the playing, notably in the Bachannale from Saint- Saens’ opera Samson et Dalila which seemed to blow the roof off the Royal Festival Hall in London. Thanks to my wonderfully generous parents, I had already been going to concerts for four years, also some opera, and even in my adolescent inexperience I did realise that this music making was very different from any other I had encountered. The range of colours, dynamics, and expression – I did certainly pick that up, and it catalysed an interest in Beecham that soon led me to discover dozens of recordings that to this day I have so deeply loved: for their poetry, their brilliance, their characterisation, and their astonishing perfection of execution with impeccable ensemble and flawless intonation. Two that most especially overwhelmed me then – and they still do – were the Suites compiled from Bizet’s incidental music for the stage play that Alphonse Daudet adapted from his heartbreakingly poignant short story L’Arlésienne: playing that was both so plaintive and intense that it haunted me day after day after I bought the LP disc with the Van Gogh portrait of Marie Ginoux, [L’Arlésienne, though not the character in the play] on the cover (Warner Classics 2435672312); and five Berlioz Overtures (Sony 898072000): Le Corsaire, Waverly, Les francs-juges, Le carnaval romain, and King Lear – even as a 12 year old kid I could appreciate the fire, virtuosity and knife-edged attack of all the orchestra in the passages suggesting Lear’s madness and suffering, as well as the whispering remoteness of the strange woodwind and string lines that suggest Lear’s melancholy wanderings of mind. Any kid with musical feeling would appreciate all that – I was neither talented nor knowledgeable in any way, I was just automatically mesmerised, as so many people all over the world were and are, by the immense impression that the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra playing under Sir Thomas Beecham’s direction immediately made.