Tis’ the Season. The Beecham Season.

As Christmas draws nigh, my thoughts turn (unsurprisingly) to that piece of classical music NPR DJ-extraordinaire Jim Svejda (whose mellifluous tones and not-entirely-categorizeable accent were a near-constant presence on my youthful ears) considers nearly as essential to Christmas as The Man Himself. And to the recording of that particular piece he considers nearly as essential:

If Christmas isn’t really Christmas without Christmas music, then Christmas without Handel’s “Messiah” is all but unthinkable.

…

Although there are nearly 50 “Messiah” recordings currently available, Sir Thomas Beecham’s famous recording (of Sir Eugene Goossens’s stunning arrangement) remains unique. And until you’ve heard “Messiah” with Jon Vickers’s singing, Beecham’s racy tempos, and an orchestra that includes trombones, tubas, tam-tams, cymbals, snare drums, and gong, you haven’t really lived. And if most of the arrangement was actually done by Beecham himself, as has been suggested, it only makes this most intensely personal interpretation of “Messiah” seem even more so.

This clip — “Why do the nations so furiously rage” — is pretty much my favorite bit of musical insanity ever. (And yes, it’s insane. Just listen to it.) I’m also sort-of-messing around/up with Spotify. If you’re one of those folks, try this. (I don’t really like the “You can hear if you’re logged in or you can get yourself an account if you don’t have one” feature…er, “feature.” But it’s sort of a nice way to share music. Which is one of my “kittens/mittens/brown paper packages” things.)

Attribution(s): “Beecham, 1910” – scanned from the dust jacket of Thomas Beecham: An Obsession with Music, by John Lucas, London, Boydell, 2008, ISBN 9781843834021. Original published in a “Supplement to The World,” 1910. Via Wikipedia.