The Beecham Collection Berlioz & Wagner Orchestral Excerpts

Description

SOMM Recordings continues its long-standing and highly regarded series, The Beecham Collection, with its 35th release of live recordings by Sir Thomas Beecham and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. The recording highlights Beecham's operatic side with orchestral excerpts from Hector Berlioz's Les Troyens and La Damnation de Faust, as well as Richard Wagner's Tannhäuser, Parsifal, Götterdämmerung, and Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg. Producer and sound engineer Lani Spahr, whose work for SOMM on Elgar from the Archives was described by Gramophone Magazine as "astonishing" and "revealing," is once again responsible for the audio restoration of this edition. Sir Thomas Beecham, Bart., C.H. made his professional debut on December 6, 1899, at St Helen's Town Hall when he was twenty years old. He conducted the Hungarian March from Berlioz's La Damnation de Faust with the Hallé Orchestra, and Berlioz's music would become one of the cornerstones of his repertoire for the next six decades. This current recording of the Hungarian March is a gloriously unrestrained performance that electrified the hall at the end of a concert in 1955 at the Royal Festival Hall. This concert also included two excerpts from Berlioz's Les Troyens. The Prelude to Les Troyens à Carthage is followed by The Royal Hunt and Storm, with the Oxford Bach Choir providing the brief choral contribution of Nymphes, Sylvans et Fauns. These performances stand out for their atmospheric poetry in the slower sections and unleashed energy in the faster music. The same year as his professional debut, a young Beecham made his pilgrimage to Bayreuth, and he became an enthusiastic and instinctive conductor of Wagner's music. The famous music critic Neville Cardus once noted that while German conductors tended to take a thoughtful and philosophical approach to interpreting Wagner, Sir Thomas focused on the dramatic and picturesque aspects of the music. This focus on color and drama makes his conducting of the orchestral excerpts included in this release both satisfying and full of character. These four orchestral excerpts were recorded at the Royal Festival Hall on December 17, 1958. The concert opened with the Overture and the music of Venusberg from Tannhäuser; for decades, one of Beecham's warhorses as a concert opener. Orchestral excerpts from Parsifal regularly appeared in Beecham's concert programs, and this 1958 concert featured the music from Good Friday. Beecham conducted several cycles of the Ring during his career, and his affinity for the music shines through in this recording of Siegfried's Journey from the Rhine to Götterdämmerung. This release concludes with the Prelude to Act One of Die Meistersinger, about which the Daily Telegraph critic stated: "the thickly layered texture of the overture has rarely been given with such golden clarity."