Sinfonia of London is a session orchestra based in London, England, and conducted by John Wilson. The current orchestra is the third of three distinct ensembles of this name. The original Sinfonia of London was founded in 1955 by Gordon Walker, an eminent flautist of his time, specifically for the recording of film music. The orchestra came into being when there was a split in the future direction of 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 Orc ...

, many LSO players leaving to join the Sinfonia of London in order to undertake the more lucrative film soundtrack work. The orchestra appeared in the musical credits of many

British British may refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * British people, nationals or natives of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories, and Crown Dependencies. ** Britishness, the British identity and common culture * British English, ...

and

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s of the 1950s and '60s, including the 1958 soundtrack for the Alfred Hitchcock thriller ''

Vertigo Vertigo is a condition where a person has the sensation of movement or of surrounding objects moving when they are not. Often it feels like a spinning or swaying movement. This may be associated with nausea, vomiting, sweating, or difficulties w ...

'' with Bernard Herrmann's score conducted by

Muir Mathieson James Muir Mathieson, OBE (24 January 19112 August 1975) was a Scottish conductor and composer. Mathieson was almost always described as a "Musical Director" on many British films. Career Mathieson was born in Stirling, Scotland, in 1911. A ...

for

Mercury Records Mercury Records is an American record label owned by Universal Music Group. It had significant success as an independent operation in the 1940s and 1950s. Smash Records and Fontana Records were sub labels of Mercury. In the United States, it i ...

and, in 1961, the soundtrack of the horror film '' Gorgo''. Among the original ensemble's most celebrated commercial classical recordings are the first recording made by Colin Davis, comprising Mozart's Symphonies 29 and 39 and issued by World Record Club (TZ 130) along with its 1963 recordings with

Sir John Barbirolli Sir John Barbirolli ( Giovanni Battista Barbirolli; 2 December 189929 July 1970) was a British conductor and cellist. He is remembered above all as conductor of the Hallé Orchestra in Manchester, which he helped save from dissolution in 194 ...

conducting the '' Serenade for Strings'' of Edward Elgar and the '' Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis'' of Ralph Vaughan Williams for

EMI Classics EMI Classics was a record label founded by Thorn EMI in 1990 to reduce the need to create country-specific packaging and catalogues for internationally distributed classical music releases. After Thorn EMI demerged in 1996, its recorded mus ...

. Hans Swarowsky conducted the ensemble in a World Record Club LP (WRC T 11) of

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 classic ...

's 5th Symphony and Egmont Overture. The original orchestra ceased to perform during the 1960s.Morrison, pp. 109–110 In 1982 the title Sinfonia of London was bought by Peter Willison and Howard Blake from the Walker family for the purpose of having a named orchestra for the first recording of ''The Snowman''. In February 1998, Bruce Broughton was named the orchestra's second musical director after Blake. Under Peter Willison's management, the orchestra went on to record many soundtracks for major Hollywood films, including '' Batman'', ''

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'', '' Lara Croft: Tomb Raider'', ''

Lost in Space ''Lost in Space'' is an American science fiction television series, created and produced by Irwin Allen, which originally aired between 1965 and 1968 on CBS. The series was inspired by the 1812 novel ''The Swiss Family Robinson.'' The series fo ...

'', '' The Lawnmower Man'', '' Stargate'', '' Tombstone'', '' RoboCop'' and '' Young Sherlock Holmes''. Sinfonia of London was reformed into its third incarnation in 2018 by the conductor John Wilson to undertake a series of recording projects, beginning with a recording of Korngold's Symphony in F Sharp on the label Chandos.

Notes

References

External links

Harry Downey, Music-Web International web page, review of EMI Classics CDM5 67240 2, April 2000
London orchestras {{Orchestra-stub