Editing Thomas Beecham (section)

===Handel, Haydn, and Mozart===
{{see also|Beecham-Handel suites}}
[[File:Teyte-Cherubino.jpg|thumb|right|150px|alt=full length portrait of a woman dressed as a boy in eighteenth century military costume|[[Maggie Teyte]] as Cherubino in Beecham's 1910 production of ''[[The Marriage of Figaro]]'']]
The earliest composer whose music Beecham regularly performed was [[George Frideric Handel|Handel]], whom he called, "the great international master of all time. ... He wrote Italian music better than any Italian; French music better than any Frenchman; English music better than any Englishman; and, with the exception of Bach, outrivalled all other Germans."<ref>Beecham (1992), p. 5</ref> In his performances of Handel, Beecham ignored what he called the "professors, pedants, pedagogues".<ref name=jefferson236>Jefferson, p. 236</ref> He followed Mendelssohn and Mozart in editing and reorchestrating Handel's scores to suit contemporary tastes.<ref name=jefferson236/> At a time when Handel's operas were scarcely known, Beecham knew them so well that he was able to arrange three ballets, two other suites and a piano concerto from them.{{refn|The Handel works on which Beecham drew included ''[[Admeto]], [[Alcina]], [[Ariodante]], [[Clori, Tirsi e Fileno]], [[Lotario (Handel)|Lotario]], Il Parnasso in Festa, [[Il pastor fido]], [[Radamisto (Handel)|Radamisto]], [[Rinaldo (opera)|Rinaldo]], [[Rodrigo]], [[Serse]], [[Teseo]]'' and ''[[The Triumph of Time and Truth]]''.<ref>Golding, pp 3–6; and Melville-Mason (Handel), pp. 4–5</ref>|group= n}} He gave Handel's oratorio ''[[Solomon (Handel)|Solomon]]'' its first performance since the 18th century, with a text edited by the conductor.<ref>Procter-Gregg, p. 14</ref>

With Haydn, too, Beecham was far from an authenticist, using unscholarly 19th-century versions of the scores, avoiding the use of the [[harpsichord]], and phrasing the music romantically.<ref name=gramhaydn/> He recorded the twelve "[[London symphonies|London]]" symphonies, and regularly programmed some of them in his concerts.<ref>Jefferson, pp. 235–236</ref> Earlier Haydn works were unfamiliar in the first half of the 20th century, but Beecham conducted several of them, including the [[Symphony No. 40 (Joseph Haydn)|Symphony No. 40]] and an early piano concerto.<ref>Procter-Gregg, p. 197</ref> He programmed ''[[The Seasons (Haydn)|The Seasons]]'' regularly throughout his career, recording it for [[EMI]] in 1956, and in 1944 added ''[[The Creation (Haydn)|The Creation]]'' to his repertoire.<ref name=jefferson236/>

For Beecham, Mozart was "the central point of European music,"<ref>Jefferson, p. 238</ref> and he treated the composer's scores with more deference than he gave most others. He edited the incomplete [[Requiem (Mozart)|Requiem]], made English translations of at least two of the great operas, and introduced Covent Garden audiences who had rarely if ever heard them to ''[[Così fan tutte]]'', ''[[Der Schauspieldirektor]]'' and ''[[Die Entführung aus dem Serail]]''; he also regularly programmed ''[[The Magic Flute]]'', ''[[Don Giovanni]]'' and ''[[The Marriage of Figaro]]''.<ref>Lucas, pp. 62–63</ref>{{refn|Beecham liked to claim that he introduced ''Così fan tutte'' to Britain.<ref name=pg182>Procter-Gregg, p. 182.</ref> In fact, although he gave its first British performance for decades at His Majesty's Theatre in 1910, it had been performed in London in 1811,<ref name=holden>Holden, p. 253</ref><ref>"King's Theatre", ''The Times'', 7 May 1811, p. 4; and 29 June 1811, p. 2</ref> in 1818<ref>"King's Theatre", ''The Times'', 12 June 1818, p. 2; and 21 July 1818, p. 2</ref> and again by the St. George's Opera Company in 1873, attracting very favourable comment from ''The Times''.<ref>"St. George's Opera", ''The Times'', 21 January 1873, p. 4</ref> Beecham was, however, correct when he teased an American lecture audience that ''Così fan tutte'' did not appear in the US until "about thirteen years" after his London production.<ref name=pg182/> The US premiere was in 1922.<ref name=holden/>|group= n}} He considered the best of Mozart's piano concertos to be "the most beautiful compositions of their kind in the world", and he played them many times with Betty Humby-Beecham and others.<ref>Jefferson, pp. 115 and 238</ref>