Connoisseurs of historic performances will readily appreciate
Sir Thomas Beecham's renditions with the
Royal Philharmonic Orchestra of
Pyotr Il'yich Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 4 in F minor, the suite from The Nutcracker, and the Waltz from the opera Eugene Onegin, but most other listeners who have little interest in this conductor's legacy may pass on this 2007 reissue. Recorded in mono (only the Waltz is in stereo), but digitally remastered to remove most of the analog source's hiss, these recordings in EMI's Great Recordings of the Century series will not satisfy anyone insisting on a close equivalent to contemporary standards of reproduction; many will find that the sound is rough in the symphony, where the orchestra's tutti are mildly distorted and boxy in the recording of The Nutcracker. However, admirers of
Beecham's idiosyncratic interpretations will listen past these surface defects and find the performances to be quirky and spontaneous, and far from staid or routine.
Beecham's tempos from time to time are unconventional, either quite fast in the Allegros or slower than usual at Andante, but never so far from the norm that they are utterly wrong; and though the phrasing is sometimes choppy and attacks are overdone (probably for the sake of being heard clearly on record),
Beecham's unique approaches in shaping melody and enhancing a piece's character through distinctive accentuation contributed to his status as one of the century's most distinctive and identifiable conductors.