Sir Thomas Beecham

Once described by the BBC as 'Britain's first international conductor', Sir Thomas Beecham's legend stands high in the annals of classical music. Born on April 29, 1879, he came from a wealthy family. His father Sir Joseph Beecham had made his fortune from manufacturing Beecham pills and the young Thomas was spared no expense in his early life growing up in St Helens, Lancashire in the 1890s. He had his first music lessons from a local organist and went on to attend the Rossall School in Lancashire before going to Wadham Colleg in Oxford, but left to pursue music. Self-taught as a conductor, he studied composition with Charles Wood in London and Moritz Moszkowski in Paris. In 1899, at age 20, he conducted a performance by Manchester's famous Hallé Orchestra, stepping in for Hans Richter. Conducting from memory without a score—a practice he maintained—this debut was a resounding success. In 1902, he began conducting opera with The Bohemian Girl at the Shakespeare Theatre, Clapham, for the Imperial Grand Opera Company, also leading Carmen and Pagliacci. He gave his first symphonic concert in London with members of the Queens Orchestra in 1905. The following year he became conductor of the New Symphony Orchestra before forming the Beecham Symphony Orchestra in 1909. Backed by the family fortune he took over the creative and business management of London's Covent Garden and regularly conducted there and at other prestigious venues such as Drury Lane and His Majesty's Theatre, becoming famed particularly for his work on Wagner, Richard Strauss and Frederick Delius, as well as Russian composers and Diaghilev's Ballets Russes, introducing music that had been rarely heard before to the capital's arts scene. In 1915, he established the Beecham Opera Company, which evolved into the British National Opera Company in 1923, but his lavish spending led to bankruptcy in 1920. He was knighted in 1916 and on the death of his father acquired the title of Baronet. Despite financial setbacks, he built an international reputation in the 1920s, conducting in New York (Carnegie Hall, 1928), Paris, Vienna, and Berlin. In 1932, he co-founded the London Philharmonic Orchestra with Malcolm Sargent and served as Covent Garden’s artistic director until 1939. His controversial 1936 tour in Germany, where he was forced to remove Mendelssohn’s Scottish Symphony due to the composer’s Jewish heritage, was a low point. During World War II, Beecham relocated to the United States, leading the Seattle Symphony (1941-1944) and the Metropolitan Opera (1942-1944). Returning to England in 1944, he found the London Philharmonic had become self-governing and resistant to his leadership. In 1946, he founded the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, which he conducted until 1960, leading a triumphant North American tour in 1950 and recording landmark works, such as Puccini’s La Bohème (1956, with Jussi Björling and Victoria de los Angeles). A specialist in Mozart, Haydn, Delius, Sibelius, Berlioz, and 19th-century French composers, Beecham was celebrated for his incisive style, eclectic repertoire, and vibrant interpretations, often captured in recordings like Mozart’s The Magic Flute (1937-1938). He was a somewhat controversial character - charismatic and with a sharp sense of humour, but ruthless in his criticism and attitude to others, feared by some and famously unsparing in his words if he felt a member of his orchestra wasn't performing to his standard. He wrote his autobiography A Mingled Chime (1943) and also wrote a biography of one of his great heroes, Delius (1959). He died on March 8, 1961, at the age of 81.