Sir Thomas Beecham, 2nd Baronet, CH, was an English conductor and impresario. He founded the London Philharmonic and the RoyalPhilharmonic orchestras. He used his access to the family fortune to finance opera from the 1910s until the start of the Second World War. He died in 1961 and is buried in St Helens, Lancashire, where he was born in 1892.
About Thomas Beecham in brief
Sir Thomas Beecham, 2nd Baronet, CH, was an English conductor and impresario. He founded the London Philharmonic and the RoyalPhilharmonic orchestras. He was also closely associated with the Liverpool Philharmonics and Hallé orchestras, and was a major influence on the musical life of Britain. He used his access to the family fortune to finance opera from the 1910s until the start of the Second World War. Among the works he introduced to England were Richard Strauss’s Elektra, Salome and Der Rosenkavalier and three operas by Frederick Delius. He died in 1961 and is buried in St Helens, Lancashire, where he was born in 1892. He is survived by his wife, Josephine, née Burnett, and two children, Thomas and Emily. He also leaves behind a son, Thomas, and a daughter, Emily, who were married for more than 50 years and have two sons, Thomas and Emily, both of whom are also conductors. He has also a step-grandson, Thomas, who is also a conductor. He had a great love of Mozart, Haydn, Schubert, Sibelius and the composer he revered above all others, Mozart. In his early years, he was not satisfied with his own music and instead concentrated on conducting new works by lesser-known composers. In 1906 he proposed a long list of works by barely known composers for a new orchestra, the Bechsteinsteinstein.
In the 1940s he worked for three years in the U.S. as music director of the Seattle Symphony and conducted at the Metropolitan Opera. After his return to Britain, he founded the Royalphilharmonic in 1946 and conducted it until his death in 1961. He was also a leading exponent of the Zélie de Lussan title, a title given to the leading French conductor of the same era, Zlielie de Zussan, who was also a friend and colleague of Sir Alexei Rachmaninoff. His son Thomas, a composer and conductor, is also known for his work with the New Symphony Orchestra, a group of 46 players formed in 1906, and the London Symphony Orchestra. His great-great-great grandson is the composer and pianist David BeechAm, who died in 2011. He will be buried at St Helen, Lancs, with his wife Emily, and his children Thomas, David and Emily, and their daughter Emily. He leaves a wife and two daughters, Josephine and Thomas Beecham and a son David, who has a son and daughter-in-law, Michael Beech am, who also works as a conductor and is a director of a London music company. He lived in St. Helens and died in London in 1961, aged 87. He left a fortune of £1,000,000 and was awarded the CBE for services to music.
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This page is based on the article Thomas Beecham published in Wikipedia (as of Nov. 05, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
