After his autocratic 50-year reign and his final five years collaborating with the Nazis, Willem Mengelberg was driven into exile in Switzerland, and his second principal conductor, Eduard van Beinum, became the music director of the Concertgebouw Orchestra Amsterdam. Van Beinum lasted only 14 years. He had his first heart attack at 50, his next at 55, and his last at a rehearsal with the Concertgebouw. The players of the Concertgebouw were heartbroken. After Mengelberg's romantic fascism, they'd come to love van Beinum's ...
Read More
After his autocratic 50-year reign and his final five years collaborating with the Nazis, Willem Mengelberg was driven into exile in Switzerland, and his second principal conductor, Eduard van Beinum, became the music director of the Concertgebouw Orchestra Amsterdam. Van Beinum lasted only 14 years. He had his first heart attack at 50, his next at 55, and his last at a rehearsal with the Concertgebouw. The players of the Concertgebouw were heartbroken. After Mengelberg's romantic fascism, they'd come to love van Beinum's clear and lucid conducting and his collegial and courteous manner. International record collectors, too, were heartbroken, because van Beinum made relatively few recordings, and almost all of them were monaural thus destined to be slagged as stereo took over the marketplace. This volume of EMI's Great Conductors of the Twentieth Century series is dedicated to the gentle art of van Beinum. Most of the recordings with the Concertgebouw are old Philips mono brilliantly remastered by EMI....
Read Less
