September 1961
There are clearly going to be many books about this extraordinary man, and these are neither of them in any sense definitive, but they are interesting and enjoyable to be going on with. Both have the double-edged virtue of being written by music critics who knew Beecham, and, in the case of Cardus, came under the spell of his colossal personality. Cardus whose book is more a personal - although informed - recollection than it is anything else, has produced a portrait imbued with his affection. He had his ups and downs with Beecham: but it is clear that they were too much in sympathy for irrevocable hostility. ‘It is time,’ said Beecham after a year’s quarrel, ‘that we buried the hatchet - but let us carefully mark the place.’ From Cardus one gets an impression of the boundless nervous energy which moved the greatest architect of orchestras we are ever likely to hear. Beecham did not simply give performances - he made music (sometimes in the sense that Wagner did not simply write operas, he got them performed), and orchestral music and opera, one might thankfully say, have not yet recovered from his impact. On his seventieth birthday he was given a luncheon at which greetings from eminent musicians were read out with much applause. When it died down he looked up at the chairman with a slightly pained expression and asked: ‘Nothing from Mozart?’
Mr. Cardus’s short book made up of reminiscence and critical appreciation, is pleasant reading and will be of great value to any future biographer.
Mr. Reid’s book - which is a straight - perforce condensed - account of Beecham’s life, adds a good deal of factual information to both Cardus’s memoirs and Beecham’s own admirable autobiography A Mingled Chime; but contains false emphases and generally gives the impression of being too hurriedly composed: it has some very good and some much less good writing, but is well worth reading for its anecdotes about someone whose whole life was a performance and whose performance of music was his life.