History
Background
Almost from its beginning in November 1922, theReith's BBC of the 1920s was ... imbued with an almost religious zeal for "enlightening" the public through the magical medium of the wireless. An orchestra, and particularly one that was unencumbered by commercial constraints and thus free to deliver the highest of highbrow programmes, would fit very well into that idealistic philosophy.Landon Ronald brought Reith and Beecham together in April 1928; negotiations and preliminary arrangements continued for more than 18 months until it became clear that the corporation and the conductor had irreconcilable priorities for the proposed new ensemble. Beecham withdrew and, as described by
Foundation
By the timeSecond World War and postwar
On the outbreak of war in September 1939 the BBC put into effect its contingency plans to minimise disruption of broadcasting. The corporation withdrew from responsibility for the Proms, with which Wood went ahead, backed by the Royal Philharmonic Society, with the LSO replacing the BBC SO. The BBC SO was relocated from London to1950s
Sargent, an immensely popular figure with the public, was not at all popular with orchestral players, because of what a historian of the Proms has called his "autocratic and ''prima-donna'' attitude towards orchestral players". He offended the BBC SO players by demanding that they all stand up when he came on to the platform – which they firmly declined to do. He rapidly became equally unpopular with the BBC music department, ignoring its agenda and pursuing his own.Cox, p. 164 He refused to join the staff of the BBC, and insisted on remaining a freelance, taking numerous external engagements to the detriment of his work with the BBC SO. A senior BBC manager wrote:Except when a Barbirolli or a Kletzki has been in charge for a few days, the Orchestra is inferior, as an artistic instrument, to the Hallé or Philharmonia...It did not help that Sargent was universally acknowledged to be at his finest in choral music. His reputation in big works for chorus and orchestra such as ''argent In heraldry, argent () is the tincture of silver, and belongs to the class of light tinctures called "metals". It is very frequently depicted as white and usually considered interchangeable with it. In engravings and line drawings, regions to b ...is indifferent to the morale and welfare of the Orchestra and to the individual temperaments of his players as artists or as human beings.
1960s to 1980s
In 1959, the BBC appointedI felt I was getting too secure ... nthe BBC Symphony you can be a poor player, but if you're on time and never moan at the conductor … you'll have no trouble... I think the BBC Symphony lost some good young players because the management got their priorities wrong.Glock was well known as a proponent of music of the
1990s and 21st century
Pritchard's successor was Andrew Davis, beginning in 1989. He held the post until 2000, the longest-serving chief conductor since Boult. He was at the helm for what John Allison in ''The Times'' called "the valuable Barbican weekends that each January investigate another major but not fully understood 20th-century composer." Noting that modern music was central to the work of Davis and the orchestra, Allison added that under Davis the orchestra took part in "once-in-a-lifetime projects such asFunction in the 21st century
The BBC SO is the associate orchestra of theRecordings
From their first years the BBC SO and its predecessor the BBC Wireless SO were active in commercial recording studios. Under Percy Pitt the Wireless SO recorded mostly shorter works and some that were abridged, but represented composers as diverse as Glazunov, Tchaikovsky (the entire ''See also
*Notes and references
Notes
References
Sources
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *External links
*BBC Symphony Orchestr