The London Symphony Orchestra

The London Symphony Orchestra (LSO) is a British symphony orchestra based in London. Founded in 1904, the LSO is the oldest of London's symphony orchestras. The LSO was created by a group of players who left Henry Wood's Queen's Hall Orchestra because of a new rule requiring players to give the orchestra their exclusive services. The LSO itself later introduced a similar rule for its members. From the outset the LSO was organised on co-operative lines, with all players sharing the profits at the end of each season. This practice continued for the orchestra's first four decades.

The LSO underwent periods of eclipse in the 1930s and 1950s when it was regarded as inferior in quality to new London orchestras, to which it lost players and bookings: the BBC Symphony Orchestra and the London Philharmonic Orchestra in the 1930s and the Philharmonia and Royal Philharmonic after the Second World War. The profit-sharing principle was abandoned in the post-war era as a condition of receiving public subsidy for the first time. In the 1950s the orchestra debated whether to concentrate on film work at the expense of symphony concerts; many senior players left when the majority of players rejected the idea. By the 1960s the LSO had recovered its leading position, which it has retained subsequently. In 1966, to perform alongside it in choral works, the orchestra established the LSO Chorus, originally a mix of professional and amateur singers, later a wholly amateur ensemble.

As a self-governing body, the orchestra selects the conductors with whom it works. At some stages in its history it has dispensed with a principal conductor and worked only with guests. Among conductors with whom it is most associated are, in its early days, Hans Richter, Sir Edward Elgar, and Sir Thomas Beecham, and in more recent decades Pierre Monteux, André Previn, Claudio Abbado, Sir Colin Davis, and Valery Gergiev.

Since 1982, the LSO has been based in the Barbican Centre in the City of London. Among its programmes there have been large-scale festivals celebrating composers as diverse as Berlioz, Mahler and Bernstein. The LSO claims to be the world's most recorded orchestra; it has made gramophone recordings since 1912 and has played on more than 200 soundtrack recordings for the cinema, of which the best known include the ''Star Wars'' series. The LSO is consistently ranked as one of the world's leading orchestras.

History

Background

At the turn of the twentieth century there were no permanent salaried orchestras in London. The main orchestras were those of Covent Garden, the Philharmonic Society and the Queen's Hall; their proprietors engaged players individually for each concert or for a season. As there were competing demands for the services of the finest players it was an accepted practice that, even though under contract to play for a concert, a player was at liberty to accept a better-paid engagement if it were offered. He would then engage another player to deputise for him at the original concert and the rehearsals for it. The treasurer of the Philharmonic Society described the system thus: "A, whom you want, signs to play at your concert. He sends B (whom you don't mind) to the first rehearsal. B, without your knowledge or consent, sends C to the second rehearsal. Not being able to play at the concert, C sends D, whom you would have paid five shillings to stay away." There was much competition for good orchestral players, with well-paid engagements offered by more than fifty music halls, by pit bands in West End musical comedies, and by grand hotels and restaurants which maintained orchestras.

In 1904, the manager of the Queen's Hall, Robert Newman and the conductor of his promenade concerts, Henry Wood, agreed that they could no longer tolerate the deputy system. After a rehearsal in which Wood was faced with dozens of unfamiliar faces in his own orchestra, Newman came to the platform and announced: "Gentlemen, in future there will be ''no'' deputies! Good morning!" This caused a furore. Orchestral musicians were not highly paid, and removing their chances of better-paid engagements permitted by the deputy system was a serious financial blow to many of them."The London Symphony Orchestra"
''The Musical Times'', Vol. 52, No. 825 (November 1911), pp. 705–707 While travelling by train to play under Wood at a music festival in the north of England in May 1904, soon after Newman's announcement, some of his leading players discussed the situation and agreed to try to form their own orchestra. The principal movers were three horn players (Adolf Borsdorf, Thomas Busby, and Henri van der Meerschen) and a trumpeter, John Solomon.

Foundation

Busby organised a meeting at St. Andrew's Hall, not far from the Queen's Hall. Invitations were sent to present and former members of the Queen's Hall Orchestra. About a hundred players attended. Busby explained the scheme: a new ensemble, the London Symphony Orchestra, to be run on co-operative lines, "something akin to a Musical Republic", with a constitution that gave the organisation independence. At concerts promoted by the LSO the members played without fee, their remuneration coming at the end of each season in a division of the orchestra's profits. This worked well in good years, but any poorly-patronised series left members out of pocket, and reliant on the LSO's engagements to play for provincial choral societies and other managements. The proposal was approved unanimously, and a management committee was elected, comprising the four original movers and Alfred Hobday (viola) and E F (Fred) James (bassoon). Busby was appointed chief executive, a post variously titled "Secretary", "managing director", "general secretary" and "general manager" over the years.

Borsdorf was a player of international reputation, and through his influence, the orchestra secured Hans Richter to conduct its first concert. Newman held no grudge against the rebels and made the Queen's Hall available to them. He and Wood attended the LSO's first concert, on 9 June 1904. The programme consisted of the prelude to ''Die Meistersinger'', music by Bach, Mozart, Elgar and Liszt, and finally Beethoven's Fifth Symphony. In a favourable review in ''The Times'', J A Fuller Maitland noted that 49 members of the new orchestra were rebels against Newman's no-deputy rule, 32 had left the Queen's Hall Orchestra earlier, and the other 21 had no connection with Wood and Newman."Concerts", ''The Times'', 10 June 1904, p. 7

In a profile of the orchestra in 1911, ''The Musical Times'' commented:

Early years

The orchestra made its first British tour in 1905, conducted by Sir Edward Elgar. Elgar's conducting was highly praised; as to the orchestra, Ernest Newman wrote in ''The Manchester Guardian'', "Its brass and its wood-wind were seen to be of exceptional quality, but the strings, fine as they are, have not the substance nor the colour of the Hallé strings." The following year the LSO played outside Britain for the first time, giving concerts in Paris, conducted by Edouard Colonne, Sir Charles Stanford and André Messager. Richard Morrison, in his centenary study of the LSO, writes of "stodgy programmes of insipid Cowen, worthy Stanford, dull Parry and mediocre Mackenzie"; they put the Parisian public off to a considerable degree, and the players ended up out of pocket.

In its early years Richter was the LSO's most frequently-engaged conductor, with four or five concerts every season; the orchestra's website and Morrison's 2004 book both count him as the orchestra's first chief conductor, though the 1911 ''Musical Times'' article indicates otherwise."1900s and 1910s"
London Symphony Orchestra. Retrieved 7 July 2012; Morrison, p. 26 Richter retired from conducting in 1911, and Elgar was elected conductor-in-chief for the 1911–12 season. Elgar conducted six concerts, Arthur Nikisch three, and Willem Mengelberg, Fritz Steinbach and Gustave Doret one each. As a conductor Elgar did not prove to be a big enough box-office draw, and after one season he was replaced by the charismatic Hungarian maestro Nikisch.

Nikisch was invited to tour North America in 1912, and despite his long association with the Berlin Philharmonic and Leipzig Gewandhaus orchestras, he insisted that the LSO should be contracted for the tour. The orchestra, 100-strong (all men except for the harpist), was booked to sail on the Titanic, but the tour schedule was changed at the last minute, and the players sailed safely on the Baltic.Morrison, p. 45 The tour was arduous, but a triumph. ''The New York Press'' said, "The great British band played with a vigor, force and temperamental impetuousness that almost lifted the listener out of his seat." ''The New York Times'' praised all departments of the orchestra, though, like ''The Manchester Guardian'', it found the strings "brilliant rather than mellow". The paper had a little fun at the LSO's expense: from the viewpoint of a country that had long enjoyed permanent, salaried orchestras such as the Boston Symphony, it gently mocked the LSO's "bold stand for the sacred right of sending substitutes"

First World War and 1920s

Shortly after the beginning of the war the board of the orchestra received a petition from rank and file players protesting about Borsdorf's continued membership of the LSO. Although he had done as much as anyone to found the orchestra, had lived in Britain for 30 years and was married to an Englishwoman, Borsdorf was regarded by some colleagues as an enemy alien and was forced out of the orchestra.

During the war the musical life of Britain was drastically curtailed. The LSO was helped to survive by large donations from Sir Thomas Beecham, who also subsidised the Hallé and the Royal Philharmonic Society. For a year he took the role, though not the title, of chief conductor of the LSO. In 1916 his millionaire father died and Beecham's financial affairs became too complicated for any further musical philanthropy on his part. In 1917 the LSO's directors agreed unanimously that they would promote no more concerts until the end of the war. The orchestra played for other managements, and managed to survive, although the hitherto remunerative work for regional choral societies dwindled to almost nothing.

When peace resumed many of the former players were unavailable. A third of the orchestra's pre-war members were in the armed forces, and rebuilding was urgently needed.Morrison, p. 56 The orchestra was willing to allow the ambitious conductor Albert Coates to put himself forward as chief conductor. Coates had three attractions for the orchestra: he was a pupil of Nikisch, he had rich and influential contacts, and he was willing to conduct without fee. He and the orchestra got off to a disastrous start. Their first concert featured the premiere of Elgar's Cello Concerto. Apart from the concerto, which the composer conducted, the rest of the programme was conducted by Coates, who overran his rehearsal time at the expense of Elgar's. Lady Elgar wrote, "that brutal selfish ill-mannered bounder ... that brute Coates went on rehearsing."Lloyd-Webber, Julian
"How I fell in love with E E's darling"
''The Daily Telegraph'', 17 May 2007; and Anderson, Keith, Liner notes to Naxos CD 8.550503, Dvořák and Elgar Cello Concertos (1992), p. 4 In ''The Observer'' Newman wrote, "There have been rumours about during the week of inadequate rehearsal. Whatever the explanation, the sad fact remains that never, in all probability, has so great an orchestra made so lamentable an exhibition of itself." Coates remained as chief conductor for two seasons, and after the initial debacle is credited by Morrison with "breathing life and energy into the orchestra".Morrison, p. 57

After Coates left, the orchestra reverted to its preferred practice of engaging numerous guest conductors rather than a single principal conductor. Among the guests were Elgar, Beecham, Otto Klemperer, Bruno Walter, Wilhelm Furtwängler and Serge Koussevitzky; soloists in the 1920s included Sergei Rachmaninoff, Artur Schnabel and the young Yehudi Menuhin. Revenues were substantial, and the orchestra seemed to many to be entering into a golden age. In fact, for lack of any serious competition in the 1920s, the LSO allowed its standards of playing to slip. In 1927 the Berlin Philharmonic, under Furtwängler, gave two concerts at the Queen's Hall. These, and later concerts by the same orchestra in 1928 and 1929, made obvious the poor standards then prevailing in London. Both the BBC and Beecham had ambitions to bring London's orchestral standards up to those of Berlin. After an early attempt at co-operation between the BBC and Beecham, they went their separate ways. In 1929 the BBC began recruiting for the new BBC Symphony Orchestra under Adrian Boult. The prospect of joining a permanent, salaried orchestra was attractive enough to induce some LSO players to defect. The new orchestra immediately received enthusiastic reviews that contrasted starkly with the severe press criticisms of the LSO's playing. According to the critic W J Turner the LSO's problem was not that its playing had deteriorated, but that it had failed to keep up with the considerable improvements in playing achieved over the past two decades by the best European and American orchestras.

1930s

In 1931, Beecham was approached by the rising young conductor Malcolm Sargent with a proposal to set up a permanent, salaried orchestra with a subsidy guaranteed by Sargent's patrons, the Courtauld family. Originally Sargent and Beecham had in mind a reorganised version of the LSO, but the orchestra baulked at weeding out and replacing underperforming players. In 1932 Beecham lost patience and agreed with Sargent to set up a new orchestra from scratch. The London Philharmonic Orchestra (LPO), as it was named, consisted of 106 players including a few young musicians straight from music college, many established players from provincial orchestras, and 17 of the LSO's leading members.

To try to raise its own standards the LSO had engaged Mengelberg, a famous orchestral trainer, known as a perfectionist. He made it a precondition that the deputy system must be abandoned, which occurred in 1929."1920s and 1930s"
London Symphony Orchestra. Retrieved 16 July 2012 He conducted the orchestra for the 1930 season, and music critics commented on the improvement in the playing. Nonetheless, as patently the third-best orchestra in London, the LSO lost work it had long been used to, including the Covent Garden seasons, the Royal Philharmonic Society concerts and the Courtauld-Sargent concerts. The orchestra persuaded Sir Hamilton Harty, the popular conductor of the Hallé Orchestra, to move from Manchester to become the LSO's principal conductor. Harty brought with him eight of the Hallé's leading players to replenish the LSO's ranks, depleted by defections to the BBC and Beecham. Critics including Neville Cardus recognised the continued improvement in the LSO's playing: "On this evening's hearing the London Symphony Orchestra is likely, after all, to give its two rivals a gallant run. Under Sir Hamilton it will certainly take on a style of sincere expression, distinguished from the virtuoso brilliance cultivated by the B.B.C. Orchestra and the London Philharmonic Orchestra under Beecham." Among the milestones on the orchestra's path to recovery were the premieres of Walton's ''Belshazzar's Feast'' (1930) and First Symphony (1934), showing the orchestra "capable of rising to the challenge of the most demanding contemporary scores" (Morrison).

The foundation of the Glyndebourne Festival in 1934 was another good thing for the LSO, as its players made up nearly the entirety of the festival orchestra. An important additional source of income for the orchestra was the film industry. In March 1935 the LSO recorded Arthur Bliss's incidental music for Alexander Korda

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