With astonishingly full mono sound, this first disc in the RPO Legacy series vividly captures the tense excitement of the months following Beecham’s founding of the orchestra in 1946. It starts with the recording of the Berlioz Corsaire Overture which was the very first from the RPO to be issued. Beecham at hectic speed in the opening flourish challenges his violins to keep up, and the result has an apt element of wildness while offering fine ensemble. Tapiola, recorded a few weeks later in November 1946, similarly has a rugged intensity as well as polish, with the terracing of texture and dynamic beautifully brought out even in mono. Beecham’s 1954 Helsinki recording on Ondine, similarly rugged, brings more forward sound, but less contrast.
Finest of all in the collection to my mind is the Debussy Printemps which, as Lyndon Jenkins points out in his note, was a work which Beecham conducted as early as 1913, but which he never recorded again. Though the sessions began on the very day that Tapiola was recorded, the contrast of mood is astonishing. Finnish ruggedness and severity give way to sensuousness and beauty in the first of the two sections and to energy and colour in the second. Bach, not a composer generally associated with Beecham, inspires him to a performance which suggests French rather than German music, sweet and elegant, and the Smetana and Chabrier are electrifying, not least the horn trills in the Chabrier. The Dutton transfers have a vivid sense of presence with contrasts of dynamic and texture more clearly established than is common in mono recordings of the 1940s.'