Thomas Beecham’s Abbey Road recordings often sounded finer than those from other locations because the sound engineers’ best equipment was set up there and couldn’t easily be transported. No. 1 Studio was the venue for this 1956 recording of Mozart’s “Paris” Symphony, and besides the fine sound, Beecham’s Royal Philharmonic acquits itself with considerable finesse and polish, a good example being the taxing and exposed first violin passagework of the opening Allegro. Also noteworthy is the clarity and precision of the second violin/viola staccato accompaniment to the second group. In the Andante, the high-lying horn parts are entrusted to a superb player and the wind solos are meltingly inflected. Finest of all is the finale, three and a half minutes positively overflowing with exuberance in a splendid example of Beecham’s art at its unforgettable best. Notice how elegantly he manages the little fugal sections, making the hand-overs of the theme from first violins on downward through the strings sound marvellously firm and assured, with the winds carefully matching their phrasings as they take over. True, you don’t get any sense of antiphonal part-writing since this is a mono recording, but the transfer is extremely good.
Much less pleasing is Beecham’s 1956 Requiem, dimly recorded and filled with the kind of textural anomalies you wouldn’t happily countenance these days. Where, for example, are the bassett-horns in the Introitus? Answer: their parts are played by conventional bassoons, who can’t attain the solemnity of timbre Mozart intended. Also, Beecham uses all three trombones in the Tuba Mirum obbligato, where the effect can seem more comic than apocalyptic. And the performance itself is a grindingly tedious one, with exceptionally labored tempos (the Kyrie and Dies Irae are the worst) made still less attractive by poor choral diction and ensemble, and by a team of soloists who rarely rate above average. Unless you’re a Beecham devotee who simply wants this recording for completeness’ sake, you’d do infinitely better with Peter Schreier’s Philips version from Dresden, a snip at the price, powerfully and movingly sung, and magnificently recorded.
