Thanks to Shirley, Lady Beecham, we have here a splendid range of Beecham recordings from Sir Thomas’s personal archive, most of them never issued before. The great treasure is the live recording of Delius’s orchestral song-cycle to words by Ernest Dowson, Songs of Sunset. Rob Cowan has already described the performance as ‘achingly beautiful’, and that is no exaggeration. It was recorded at the Leeds Festival in 1934, and presents a strikingly different view of the work from that of other interpreters on disc.
Far more than any rival, Beecham conveys a virile thrust and energy in the writing, partly opting for faster speeds. Thanks to Beecham’s magnetism arguments have a tautness that can otherwise seem to ramble. Both in this, with its seven linked sections, and in the single span of An Arabesk, a setting of Jens Peter Jacobsen in Philip Heseltine’s translation, the line of the argument is clarified. Roy Henderson is the clean-cut, sensitive baritone soloist in both, sounding very English, with Olga Haley a fresh, bright mezzo soloist in the Songs of Sunset.
What has no doubt prevented this inspired reading of the Songs of Sunset from being issued before is that the test pressing of the final climactic section is missing. So, to have the work complete, that final ensemble for soloists and chorus together is included here in the studio recording which Beecham made for HMV in 1946, but which he rejected. With Nancy Evans and Redvers Llewellyn as soloists, it makes an excellent conclusion, with the chorus more clearly focused than its predeccessor in 1934. What matters is that the choral sound in both has ample weight. An apology is given for the noisy surfaces at the ends of 78 sides, but the full- bodied transfer makes that flaw easy to ignore.
Dora Labbette is the enchanting soprano soloist in all the separate songs, bright and silvery, attacking even the most exposed high notes with astonishing purity and precision, producing magical pianissimos. Four of the 10 come in the beautiful orchestral versions, with the rest accompanied at the piano by Beecham himself. He may not have been the most accomplished pianist, but his natural magnetism still shines out, not least in the striking early song, longer than the rest, Twilight Fancies.
The disc of Beecham’s arrangements of Handel is just as distinctive, always elegant and warmly expressive. He defies latterday taste if anything even more radically than Stokowski in his arrangements of Bach, yet is similarly winning. The 10 movements from the ballet, The Origin of Design, come from the very first recording sessions of Beecham’s newly founded London Philharmonic in December 1932. The following month he re-recorded three of the movements (available on Dutton, 1/97), but extraordinarily this far bigger selection of movements was never issued – brilliantly performed, with the players on their toes, not least the soloist Leon Goossens. Sadly the 78 side containing the ‘Serenade’ is so damaged that the opening of the movement has had to be omitted.
Seven of the movements from the later ballet, The Gods Go A-Begging, made between 1933 and 1938 did get published, but all the rest, including the six movements from the same ballet recorded with the RPO in 1949, have never appeared in any format, inexplicably so when Beecham is in sparkling form throughout.
The oddity is the four-movement Piano Concerto which Beecham cobbled together from various Handel movements (unidentified here) for his then-wife, the pianist Betty Humby. It makes a curious confection, starting with a nine-minute ‘Chaconne’ in which grandly spacious sections punctuate energetic chaconne variations.
The result is energetic, sounding less like Handel than 20th-century pastiche, with keyboard figuration and pianistic tricks unashamedly reflecting the romantic concerto tradition. As in the Delius disc, transfers bring satisfyingly full-bodied sound, if with obvious limitations. What is clear throughout is the Beecham magic – wonderful control of phrasing and rhythm in performances that are light of touch and full of fun.'