Sir Thomas Beecham - Mono Era on Hmv & Columbia Graphophone - 1926-1959 (53CD) - COMPACT DISCS

Conductor Sir Thomas Beecham was one of the two most influential pioneers of early orchestral recording history, alongside Leopold Stokowski, both artists strikingly displaying a new potential in the gramophone's capacity for quality orchestra reproduction through the brilliant sonorities and dynamic shadings of their discs. When Sir Thomas formed his handpicked London Philharmonic Orchestra in 1932, it is not an exaggeration to say that a new era of the very highest artistic and virtuosic orchestral quality was born, and he quickly discovered how to seize the kaleidoscopic colours, rhythmic panache and tight discipline of his LPO performances for the gramophone. He repeated the procedure again when he created his Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in 1946, and his prolific recording operations with both orchestras set legendary standards of artistry, virtuosity and sonority in gramophone history. All his mono recordings made for Columbia Graphophone and His Master Voice have been collected in this box set as a companion to Warner Classics' box of all his EMI stereo discs, revealing more vividly than ever before their luminous and exhilarating qualities. A lot of the recordings in this boxset have been specially remastered in HD from the original sources, many of them previously unreleased on CD. Album Tracks 1. Mozart 2. Beethoven 3. Mendelssohn 4. Borodin 5. Rimsky-Korsakov 6. Delius 7. Atterberg 8. Handel 9. Grieg 10. Ponchielli 11. Puccini 12. Mascagni 13. Verdi 14. Gounod 15. Prokofiev 16. Rossini 17. Nicolai 18. Dvorák 19. Wagner 20. Bizet 21. Berlioz 22. Offenbach 23. Debussy 24. Brahms 25. Schubert 26. Suppé 27. J. Strauss 28. Sibelius 29. Chabrier 30. Franck 31. Grétry 32. Weber 33. Berners 34. Tchaikovsky 35. Bax 36. Saint-Saëns 37. Massenet 38. Liszt 39. R. Strauss 40. Bantock 41