Editing Thomas Beecham (section)

===Delius, Sibelius and "Lollipops"===
[[File:Fritz Delius (1907 bw).jpg|right|thumb|upright|alt=profile portrait of a slim middle-aged man, slightly balding, clean shaven|Delius in 1907]]
Except for Delius, Beecham was generally antipathetic to, or at best lukewarm about, the music of his native land and its leading composers.<ref>Jefferson, pp. 230–233</ref> Beecham's championship of Delius, however, promoted the composer from relative obscurity.<ref>Reid, pp. 56–61</ref> Delius's [[amanuensis]], [[Eric Fenby]], referred to Beecham as "excelling all others in the music of Delius ... [[Charles Groves|Groves]] and Sargent may have matched him in the great choruses of ''[[A Mass of Life]]'', but in all else Beecham was matchless, especially with the orchestra."<ref>Procter-Gregg, pp. 56–57</ref> In an all-Delius concert in June 1911 Beecham conducted the premiere of ''[[Songs of Sunset]]''. He put on Delius Festivals in 1929 and 1946<ref>Lucas, pp. 187–189 and 316–18</ref> and presented his concert works throughout his career.<ref>Procter-Gregg, pp. 56–59.</ref> He conducted the British premieres of the operas ''[[A Village Romeo and Juliet]]'' in 1910 and ''[[Koanga]]'' in 1935, and the world premiere of ''Irmelin'' in 1953.<ref>Lucas, pp. 60, 223, and 329</ref> However, he was not an uncritical Delian: he never conducted the [[Requiem (Delius)|''Requiem'']], and he detailed his criticisms of it in his book on Delius.{{refn|Beecham thought Delius's invention was not of the same level in the ''Requiem'' as in earlier large scale compositions, and that a non-Christian requiem was a miscalculation, particularly at the height of the First World War.<ref>Montgomery and Threlfall, p. 135</ref>|group= n}}

Another major 20th-century composer who engaged Beecham's sympathies was Sibelius, who recognised him as a fine conductor of his music (although Sibelius tended to be lavish with praise of anybody who conducted his music).<ref>Osborne, p. 387</ref> In a live recording of a December 1954 concert performance of Sibelius's [[Symphony No. 2 (Sibelius)|Second Symphony]] with the [[BBC Symphony Orchestra]] in the Festival Hall, Beecham can be heard uttering encouraging shouts at the orchestra at climactic moments.<ref>Originally issued on LP as HMV ALP 1947 in 1962 and subsequently reissued on compact disc as BBC Legends BBCL 415–4 in 2005</ref>

Beecham was dismissive of some of the established classics, saying for example, "I would give the whole of Bach's ''Brandenburg Concertos'' for [[Jules Massenet|Massenet]]'s ''[[Manon]]'', and would think I had vastly profited by the exchange".<ref>Cardus, p. 29</ref> He was, by contrast, famous for presenting slight pieces as encores, which he called "lollipops". Some of the best-known were Berlioz's ''Danse des sylphes''; [[Emmanuel Chabrier|Chabrier]]'s ''[[Joyeuse Marche]]'' and [[Charles Gounod|Gounod]]'s ''Le Sommeil de Juliette''.<ref>Jenkins (1991) pp. 4 and 12</ref>