GREAT RECORDINGS phase 17

TCHAIKOVSKY
Symphony No.4
The Nutcracker – Suite
Waltz (‘Eugene Onegin’)

Sir Thomas Beecham
Royal Philharmonic Orchestra

Recorded 1953, 1954, 1957, 1958 & 1959
72 minutes

3 80016 2

Stereo / Mono
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"Here is familiar repertory, maybe, but Beecham’s performances are revelatory. He conducts the ballet suite with supreme elegance and in a wonderfully spirited, joyful fashion and the performance of the symphony is magnificent: astonishingly vivid and beautifully balanced throughout."
(The Gramophone)

This recording of Tchaikovsky’s Fourth Symphony was another fruit of Sir Thomas Beecham’s years of tax exile on the 1950s, though this time he was in the Salle Wagram with his own orchestra, the RPO.

The Penguin Guide thought the account ‘as fine as any’.

Though (perhaps oddly) the Nutcracker was a late addition to Beecham’s repertoire, it is of course perfectly suited to a conductor famous for lightness of touch and grace of phrasing.

This recording stems from a period in the early 1950s when Beecham left EMI for American Columbia, and it appears here by arrangement with Sony-BMG.