How splendid to have this deeply moving Manfred on CD at last. ''I never devoted myself to any composition with such lavish love and power'' was Schumann's own confession about his incidental music for Byron's biographically motivated dramatic poem. Sir Thomas seems to share the composer's own involvement, as is immediately apparent in the urgent disquiet and yearning of the finely played Overture. I think I should remind collectors that in his long-lasting love of the work (which he even staged in London at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane in 1918) Beecham takes a few liberties with the printed score. But I'm sure Schumann himself would be the first to thank him for unearthing and orchestrating those two exquisitely beautiful roughly contemporaneous keyboard miniatures, No. 30 (headed only with an asterisk) from Album fur die Jugend and the concluding ''Abendlied'' from the Op. 85 Duets (fur kleine und grosse Kinder) to use as additional background music for the pleading or soliloquizing Manfred himself. Their choice is no less thematically than atmospherically inspired in that both seem to share the inter-relationships that already give the work so subtle an underlying unity.
Balance of orchestra and voice in this problematical sphere of melodrama is as acutely judged as Beecham's characterization and colouring elsewhere, not forgetting the glowing intensity achieved in the scene in the great hall of the sinister Arimanes. There's a touch of strain in the upper register of a baritone spirit voice in the First Act. And once or twice Laidman Browne in the title-role presents a more overtly vulnerable and older-sounding Manfred than I think we might meet from a present-day contender. In his final confrontation with the Abbot I would certainly have preferred a less tremulous ''Old man! 'tis not so difficult to die'' by way of farewell. But for the most part the speakers (not least the persuasively rustic chamois-hunter) no less than the singers and orchestra respond with quite exceptional immediacy to the magic emanating from Beecham himself. And I cannot overpraise the mellow resonance and the clarity of the digitally remastered CD. A compulsory purchase, I'm sure, for all Byron as well as Schumann devotees.'