The Leicestershire Schools Symphony Orchestra (LSSO) is a

youth orchestra A youth orchestra is an orchestra made of Youth, young musicians, typically ranging from pre-teens or teenagers to those of Music school, conservatory age. Depending on the age range and selectiveness, they may serve different purposes. Orchest ...

based in

Leicester Leicester ( ) is a city status in the United Kingdom, city, Unitary authorities of England, unitary authority and the county town of Leicestershire in the East Midlands of England. It is the largest settlement in the East Midlands. The city l ...

, England. The players, aged between 15 and 18, are all drawn from secondary schools in the county of

Leicestershire Leicestershire ( ; postal abbreviation Leics.) is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in the East Midlands, England. The county borders Nottinghamshire to the north, Lincolnshire to the north-east, Rutland to the east, Northamptonshire t ...

and the City of

History

The Leicestershire County School of Music was the first of its kind, founded in 1948 by the county's first Music Adviser, Eric Pinkett

O.B.E. The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is a British order of chivalry, rewarding contributions to the arts and sciences, work with charitable and welfare organisations, and public service outside the civil service. It was established o ...

, with the backing of the

education committee headed up by the visionary Director of Education, Stuart Mason. By the mid 1960s, Eric Pinkett – supported by the patronage of Sir

Michael Tippett Sir Michael Kemp Tippett (2 January 1905 – 8 January 1998) was an English composer who rose to prominence during and immediately after the Second World War. In his lifetime he was sometimes ranked with his contemporary Benjamin Britten ...

– had managed to put the LSSO on the UK musical map. The orchestra also established an international reputation due to its regular concert tours of major European cities, an annual tradition that started with visits to Essen in 1953, The Hague in 1954, Aarhus in 1955 and Oslo in 1956.

Repertoire

Over the years the orchestra's repertoire has included a number of specially commissioned works by composers such as Michael Tippett (''The Shires Suite''),

David Bedford David Vickerman Bedford (4 August 1937 – 1 October 2011) was an English composer and musician. He wrote and played both popular and classical music. He was the brother of the conductor Steuart Bedford, the grandson of the composer, painter ...

(''Alleluia Timpanis''),

Bryan Kelly Bryan George Kelly (born January 3, 1934) is an English composer, conductor, and pianist from Oxford. He was a choir boy at Worcester College and attended Southfield Grammar School. After lessons with Harold Spicer, the long-serving organist and ...

(''Sancho Panza, Sinfonia Concertante''),

Anthony Milner Anthony Francis Dominic Milner (13 May 1925 – 22 September 2002) was a British composer, teacher and conductor. Milner was born in Bristol, and educated at Douai School, Berkshire. He was awarded a bursary to attend the Royal College of Music ...

(''Te Deum''),

Alan Ridout Alan Ridout (9 December 1934 – 19 March 1996) was a British composer and teacher. Life Born in West Wickham, Kent, England, Alan Ridout studied briefly at the Guildhall School of Music before commencing four years of study at the Royal C ...

(''Concertante Music, Symphony No.2, Funeral Games for a Greek Warrior''), Brian Bonsor (''The Pied Piper of Hamelin''),

William Mathias William James Mathias CBE (1 November 1934 – 29 July 1992) was a Welsh composer noted for choral works. Biography Mathias was born in Whitland, Carmarthenshire. A child prodigy, he started playing the piano at the age of three and began co ...

(''Sinfonietta''), Herbert Baumann (''Variations on an Old English Folk Song''), and

Herbert Chappell Herbert Reginald Chappell (18 March 1934 – 20 October 2019) was a British conductor, composer and film-maker, best known for his television scores. Education and early career Born in Bristol, Herbert Chappell's first musical training was as a ch ...

(Overture ''Panache'').

Conductors

Since the late 1950s, many illustrious musicians have conducted the orchestra and these have included Michael Tippett,

Arthur Bliss Sir Arthur Edward Drummond Bliss (2 August 189127 March 1975) was an English composer and conductor. Bliss's musical training was cut short by the First World War, in which he served with distinction in the army. In the post-war years he qu ...

Adrian Boult Sir Adrian Cedric Boult, CH (; 8 April 1889 – 22 February 1983) was an English conductor. Brought up in a prosperous mercantile family, he followed musical studies in England and at Leipzig, Germany, with early conducting work in London ...

Malcolm Arnold Sir Malcolm Henry Arnold (21 October 1921 – 23 September 2006) was an English composer. His works feature music in many genres, including a cycle of nine symphonies, numerous concertos, concert works, chamber music, choral music and music ...

Charles Groves Sir Charles Barnard Groves CBE (10 March 191520 June 1992) was an English conductor. He was known for the breadth of his repertoire and for encouraging contemporary composers and young conductors. After accompanying positions and conducting ...

Norman Del Mar Norman René Del Mar CBE (31 July 19196 February 1994) was a British conductor, horn player, and biographer. As a conductor, he specialised in the music of late romantic composers; including Edward Elgar, Gustav Mahler, and Richard Strauss. H ...

George Weldon George Anthony Thomas Weldon (5 June 1908, in Chichester, England – 17 August 1963, in South Africa) was an English conductor. Biography Weldon was the son of Major F H Weldon of the Sherwood Foresters."Mr. George Weldon", ''The Times'', 9 ...

, Rudolf Schwarz,

James Loughran James Loughran CBE, DMus., FRNCM, FRSAMD (born 30 June 1931, Glasgow, Scotland) is a conductor. Early life Educated at St Aloysius' College in Glasgow, Loughran conducted at school and afterwards, while studying economics and law. When he s ...

, László Heltay,

, Herbert Baumann, Douglas Cameron, Lesley Woodgate,

Stanford Robinson Stanford Robinson OBE (5 July 190425 October 1984) was an English conductor and composer, known for his work with the BBC. He remained a member of the BBC's staff until his retirement in 1966, founding or building up the organisation's choral g ...

, Oivin Fjelstad, Bernard Keeffe,

Alexander Goehr Peter Alexander Goehr (; born 10 August 1932) is an English composer and academic. Goehr was born in Berlin in 1932, the son of the conductor and composer Walter Goehr, a pupil of Arnold Schoenberg. In his early twenties he emerged as a centra ...

, Russell Burgess,

Uri Segal Uri Segal (born 7 March 1944, Jerusalem) is an Israeli musical conductor. Segal studied violin and conducting at the Rubin Academy of Music (now the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance). From 1966 to 1969, he attended the Guildhall School of Mus ...

Havelock Nelson Havelock Nelson (25 May 1917 – 5 August 1996) was an Irish composer and conductor. Life Nelson was born in Cork and studied in Dublin with Dina Copeman and Dorothy Stokes at the Royal Irish Academy of Music, organ with George Hewson and com ...

, Willy Gohl,

Dan Vogel Daniel Arlon Vogel (born 1955) is an independent researcher, writer, and author on a number of works that include '' Joseph Smith: The Making of a Prophet'' and is most known for his work on early Mormon documents. Joseph Smith biography Vogel ...

, Maurice Handford,

Pierre Cao Pierre Cao (born 22 December 1937 in Dudelange) is a Luxembourgian composer and conductor. He studied composition and conducting at the Royal Conservatory of Brussels. Classical music Cao is the regular conductor of Arsys Bourgogne with whom he ...

, Myung-whun Chung, Douglas Young,

Martyn Brabbins Martyn Charles Brabbins (born 13 August 1959) is a British conductor. The fourth of five children in his family, he learned to play the euphonium, and then the trombone during his youth at Towcester Studio Brass Band. He later studied compositi ...

, Stuart Johnson and

André Previn André George Previn (; born Andreas Ludwig Priwin; April 6, 1929 – February 28, 2019) was a German-American pianist, composer, and conductor. His career had three major genres: Hollywood films, jazz, and classical music. In each he achieved ...

Broadcasts

The orchestra has broadcast regularly on radio and television both at home and abroad, including an appearance in the BBC ''Omnibus'' programme ''The Other LSO'' with

rehearsing them in works by Glinka,

Beethoven Ludwig van Beethoven (baptised 17 December 177026 March 1827) was a German composer and pianist. Beethoven remains one of the most admired composers in the history of Western music; his works rank amongst the most performed of the classical ...

and

Rachmaninov Sergei Vasilyevich Rachmaninoff; in Russian pre-revolutionary script. (28 March 1943) was a Russian composer, virtuoso pianist, and conductor. Rachmaninoff is widely considered one of the finest pianists of his day and, as a composer, one of ...

and a series of programmes for BBC television in the mid 1980s called ''Music Time'' (see video links below). Several television programmes have featured Sir Michael Tippett and the orchestra and in 1968 a chamber group drawn from the LSSO appeared in the television series ''Sounds Exciting'' to perform

's ''Dead in Tune'' with the composer conducting and

Robin Ray Robin Ray (17 September 1934 – 29 November 1998Roger T. Stearn, "Ray, Robin (1 ...

narrating. In 1970 a studio recording of ''Dead in Tune'' was also released by

Argo In Greek mythology the ''Argo'' (; in Greek: ) was a ship built with the help of the gods that Jason and the Argonauts sailed from Iolcos to Colchis to retrieve the Golden Fleece. The ship has gone on to be used as a motif in a variety of sour ...

. Other commercial recordings by the LSSO have been issued on Pye, Argo,

CBS CBS Broadcasting Inc., commonly shortened to CBS, the abbreviation of its former legal name Columbia Broadcasting System, is an American commercial broadcast television and radio network serving as the flagship property of the CBS Entertainm ...

Unicorn The unicorn is a legendary creature that has been described since antiquity as a beast with a single large, pointed, spiraling horn projecting from its forehead. In European literature and art, the unicorn has for the last thousand years o ...

, Cameo Classics, Virgin and Performance labels.

Concerts

The orchestra has given concerts in some of Europe's major concert halls including the

Musikverein The ( or ; ), commonly shortened to , is a concert hall in Vienna, Austria, which is located in the Innere Stadt district. The building opened in 1870 and is the home of the Vienna Philharmonic orchestra. The acoustics of the building's 'Great ...

in Vienna, the

Mozarteum Mozarteum University Salzburg (German: ''Universität Mozarteum Salzburg'') is one of three affiliated but separate (it is actually a state university) entities under the “Mozarteum” moniker in Salzburg municipality; the International Mo ...

in Salzburg, the

Beethovenhalle The Beethovenhalle () is a concert hall in Bonn. It is the third hall in that city to bear the name of Bonn-born composer Ludwig van Beethoven. History The first Beethovenhalle was a temporary structure built in 1845 during the inauguration of ...

in Bonn, the Haydnsaal in

Schloss Esterházy Schloss Esterházy ( hu, Esterházy-kastély) is a palace in Eisenstadt, Austria, the capital of the Burgenland state. It was constructed in the late 13th century, and came under ownership of the Hungarian Esterházy family in 1622. Under Paul ...

(Eisenstadt, Austria), the

Palais des Beaux Arts The Centre for Fine Arts (french: Palais des Beaux-Arts, nl, Paleis voor Schone Kunsten) is a multi-purpose cultural venue in Brussels, Belgium. It is often referred to as BOZAR (a homophone of ''Beaux-arts'') in French or PSK in Dutch. The ...

in Brussels, the

Berliner Philharmonie The Berliner Philharmonie () is a concert hall in Berlin, Germany, and home to the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra. The Philharmonie lies on the south edge of the city's Tiergarten and just west of the former Berlin Wall. The Philharmonie is on ...

, the Robert-Schumann-Saal at the

Museum Kunstpalast The Kunstpalast, formerly Kunstmuseum Düsseldorf is an art museum in Düsseldorf. History The roots of the museum go back around 300 years. In 1932, the collection of the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf (Academy of Art) was housed in the Kunstmus ...

in Düsseldorf, the

Hans-Sachs-Haus The Hans-Sachs-Haus (HSH) is a landmark building in Gelsenkirchen, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany, constructed between 1924 and 1927. Named after the Meistersinger Hans Sachs, the building was designed by Essen-based architect Alfred Fische ...

in Gelsenkirchen, the

Fairfield Halls Fairfield Halls is an arts, entertainment and conference centre in Croydon, London, England, which opened in 1962 and contains a theatre and gallery, and a large concert hall regularly used for BBC television, radio and orchestral recordings. Fa ...

in Croydon, and London's

Royal Festival Hall The Royal Festival Hall is a 2,700-seat concert, dance and talks venue within Southbank Centre in London. It is situated on the South Bank of the River Thames, not far from Hungerford Bridge, in the London Borough of Lambeth. It is a Grade I l ...

. In a press review of one of the concerts given by the orchestra during their 1969 tour of Germany with Sir Michael Tippett and

Richard Rodney Bennett Sir Richard Rodney Bennett (29 March 193624 December 2012) was an English composer of film, TV and concert music, and also a jazz pianist and occasional vocalist. He was based in New York City from 1979 until his death there in 2012.Zachary Woo ...

, the LSSO was hailed as "Britain's best cultural export". Review

Havergal Brian recordings

The LSSO made the very first commercial recording of

Havergal Brian Havergal Brian (born William Brian; 29 January 187628 November 1972) was an English composer. He is best known for having composed 32 symphonies (an unusually high total for a 20th-century composer), most of them late in his life. His best-know ...

's music for the Unicorn and CBS labels in 1972 and 1974 respectively.

After Eric Pinkett's retirement

Eric Pinkett retired from his post in 1976 and died in 1979. His memorial concert, held at the De Montfort Hall, Leicester in 1980, was conducted by

, who had worked regularly with the orchestra since 1966 at home and abroad, notably their concert in the Vienna ''Musikverein'' in 1968. Eric Pinkett was followed by Peter G. Fletcher (1976–84), Stuart Johnson (1984–93), Don Blakeson (1993–97), Russell Parry (1997–2009), Andrew Bound (2009-2013), Peter Dunkley (2013-2015) and Richard Laing (2015–2017). The orchestra is currently conducted by Dan Watson.

References

External links

Official LSSO website, part of Leicestershire Schools Music Service (Leicestershire Music Education Hub)

Eric Pinkett era website (1948–1976)
Articles, photographs, audio clips, videos and memorabilia items.
LSSO
on YouTube {{authority control British symphony orchestras Education in Leicestershire English youth orchestras Music in Leicestershire Organizations established in 1948 Organisations based in Leicestershire