wonderful moments in [the Schubert]…accelerating excitement…monumental effect as
a performance overall…

Sir Thomas Beecham’s performances with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra may come from another era (mono sound, old-fashioned style), but they convey an electricity and musicianship that most of today’s high-tech recordings lack.

a very worthwhile addition to the discographies of both Beecham and Schubert. The Rienzi Overture that opens the programme is bold, bullish and bursting with energy...this concert performance becomes a summer garden and the musically evocative phrasing is 100 per cent what Beecham was about. Wonderful!

his famous capacity for taking a mediocre piece of music and making it seem great could not be better demonstrated than it is in the Rienzi Overture...In a Summer Garden here has the magical quality of the best Beecham performances, when the players rather than the conductor seem to be leading, even inventing, the music as it unfolds.

The Delius...is the pearl - the finest account of this mighty work I have ever heard. Never has the music’s rhythmic force and intensity seemed so overwhelming. Yet equally remarkable is the performance’s beauty: the second movement’s F major episode is wonderfully tender. Beecham never made a studio recording of the great C major, but now we have it.