Thomas Beecham

We've been listening to the inimitable Mona Charen.

That was the term for Sir Thomas Beecham, the great British conductor, the inimitable Sir Thomas Beecham.

You are unique and inimitable.

So thank you, Mona.

Jumping up and down with some Excessive hip action thrown in doesn't add a great deal.

Thomas Beecham used to say something along the lines of, the British public just want to hear everybody start and finish together.

They don't awfully care what happens in the middle.

There's more than a bit of truth to this.

But this is what can happen if communication goes awry, and this was taken from a live concert.

I played not to ridicule the conductor, who unfortunately squandered the opportunity to redeem himself and got it wrong twice because he didn't make it clear how long he was holding on to that fourth note, only to demonstrate how brutally difficult it is.

¶¶ And remember what Thomas Beecham said about finishing together? This is what can happen when the conductor concentrates only on the orchestra and forgets the soloists in a piano concerto.

It's clear the orchestra is behind and the piano makes a valiant effort to bring things back on track.

I never had a chance to meet him, but he seems like a very thoughtful, gentle guy.

The, the Criterion version of the film of the opera, which one was it? Sir Thomas Beecham conducted it, but-

Uh, are, are you thinking about Tales of Hoffmann?

Yes, exactly.

whose Tom Bowling fantasy overture we listened to in September last year.

He's chiefly known for his piano works, but he also wrote a concerto for the much maligned viola, which seems to be the object of friendly ridicule in the orchestra, a sort of neither one nor the other instrument, so much so that the ever-witty Thomas Beecham called it the hermaphrodite instrument.

Not sure you'd get away with making that kind of an observation nowadays, but the gist of his remark is clear enough.

Having a slightly darker timbre to the violin, the viola doesn't sing in quite the same way, so concertos are few and far between.