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BBC Symphony Orchestra
The BBC Symphony Orchestra (BBC SO) is a British orchestra based in London. Founded in 1930, it was the first permanent salaried orchestra in London, and is the only one of the city's five major symphony orchestras not to be self-governing. The BBC SO is the principal broadcast orchestra of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). The orchestra was originally conceived in 1928 as a joint enterprise by the BBC and the conductor Sir Thomas Beecham, but the latter withdrew the next year and the task of assembling and training the orchestra fell to the BBC's director of music, Adrian Boult. Among its guest conductors in its first years was Arturo Toscanini, who judged it the finest orchestra he had ever conducted. During and after the Second World War, Boult strove to maintain standards, but the senior management of the post-war BBC did not allocate the orchestra the resources to meet competition from new and well-funded rivals. After Boult's retirement from the BBC in 1950, ...
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Barbican Centre
The Barbican Centre is a performing arts centre in the Barbican Estate of the City of London, England, and the largest of its kind in Europe. The centre hosts classical and contemporary music concerts, theatre performances, film screenings and art exhibitions. It also houses a library, three restaurants, and a conservatory. The Barbican Centre is a member of the Global Cultural Districts Network. The London Symphony Orchestra and the BBC Symphony Orchestra are based in the centre's Concert Hall. In 2013, it once again became the London-based venue of the Royal Shakespeare Company following the company's departure in 2001. The Barbican Centre is owned, funded, and managed by the City of London Corporation. It was built as the City's gift to the nation at a cost of UK£161 million (equivalent to £ in ), and was officially opened to the public by Queen Elizabeth II on 3 March 1982. Together with the Southbank Centre, a similar arts centre, the Barbican Centre is ...
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BBC Proms
The BBC Proms is an eight-week summer season of daily orchestral classical music concerts and other events held annually, predominantly in the Royal Albert Hall in central London. Robert Newman founded The Proms in 1895. Since 1927, the BBC has organised and broadcast The Proms. Each season consists of concerts in the Royal Albert Hall, chamber music concerts at Cadogan Hall (or occasionally other venues), additional Proms in the Park events across the UK on the Last Night of the Proms, and associated educational and children's events. Recently, concerts have been held in additional cities across different nations of the UK, as part of Proms Around the UK. The season is a significant event in British culture and in classical music. Czech conductor Jiří Bělohlávek described the Proms as "the world's largest and most democratic musical festival". ''Prom'' is short for '' promenade concert'', a term which originally referred to outdoor concerts in London's pleasure gar ...
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His Master's Voice (British Record Label)
His Master's Voice was a British record label established in 1909. Whilst mainly releasing in the United Kingdom, the label also released in select European and African territories. Sister labels were also created, such as an Indian version, that lasted until 2003. "His Master's Voice" was a trademark of the Gramophone Company Limited (later part of EMI). In 1909, the Gramophone Company replaced the "Recording Angel" trademark with the image of Nipper the dog, listening to "His Master's Voice" on their record labels; thereafter, the records were commonly referred to as "His Master's Voice" (or HMV) records, due to the prominence of that phrase along the upper rim of the labels. The "His Master's Voice" trademark was used worldwide by The Gramophone Company/EMI and affiliated labels, except for most of the Western Hemisphere and Japan, where the rights to the trademark were owned by the Victor Talking Machine Company/RCA Victor and the Victor Company of Japan/ JVC, respectivel ...
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Sir Landon Ronald
Sir Landon Ronald (born Landon Ronald Russell) (7 June 1873 – 14 August 1938) was an English conductor, composer, pianist, teacher and administrator. In his early career he gained work as an accompanist and ''répétiteur'', but struggled to make his way as a conductor. In the absence of operatic or symphonic work he made his living as a conductor and composer in West End shows in the late 19th and early 20th century. With the foundation of the London Symphony Orchestra in 1904 his career began to flourish, and by 1908 he was well-enough established to be chosen to succeed Thomas Beecham as conductor of the New Symphony Orchestra in London. Ronald was an early enthusiast for recording, and was associated with the Gramophone Company (later part of EMI) from 1900 for the rest of his life. From 1910 until shortly before his death, Ronald was principal of the Guildhall School of Music in London. He modernised the curriculum and raised its standards to compete with the leadi ...
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Carl Maria Von Weber
Carl Maria Friedrich Ernst von Weber (5 June 1826) was a German composer, conductor, virtuoso pianist, guitarist, and Music criticism, critic in the early Romantic music, Romantic period. Best known for List of operas by Carl Maria von Weber, his operas, he was a crucial figure in the development of German ''Romantische Oper'' (German Romantic opera). Throughout his youth, his father, , relentlessly moved the family between Hamburg, Salzburg, Freiberg, Augsburg and Vienna. Consequently he studied with many teachers—his father, Johann Peter Heuschkel, Michael Haydn, Giovanni Valesi, Johann Nepomuk Kalcher, and Georg Joseph Vogler—under whose supervision he composed four operas, none of which survive complete. He had a modest output of non-operatic music, which includes two symphonies, two concertos and a Concertino for Clarinet (Weber), concertino for clarinet and orchestra, a Bassoon Concerto (Weber), bassoon concerto, a Concertino for Horn and Orchestra (Weber), horn concer ...
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Edward Elgar
Sir Edward William Elgar, 1st Baronet, (; 2 June 1857 – 23 February 1934) was an English composer, many of whose works have entered the British and international classical concert repertoire. Among his best-known compositions are orchestral works including the ''Enigma Variations'', the ''Pomp and Circumstance Marches'', concertos for Violin Concerto (Elgar), violin and Cello Concerto (Elgar), cello, and two symphony, symphonies. He also composed choral works, including ''The Dream of Gerontius'', chamber music and songs. He was appointed Master of the King's Musick in 1924. Although Elgar is often regarded as a typically English composer, most of his musical influences were not from England but from continental Europe. He felt himself to be an outsider, not only musically, but socially. In musical circles dominated by academics, he was a self-taught composer; in Protestant Britain, his Roman Catholicism was regarded with suspicion in some quarters; and in the class-consci ...
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Camille Saint-Saëns
Charles-Camille Saint-Saëns (, , 9October 183516 December 1921) was a French composer, organist, conductor and pianist of the Romantic music, Romantic era. His best-known works include Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso (1863), the Piano Concerto No. 2 (Saint-Saëns), Second Piano Concerto (1868), the Cello Concerto No. 1 (Saint-Saëns), First Cello Concerto (1872), ''Danse macabre (Saint-Saëns), Danse macabre'' (1874), the opera ''Samson and Delilah (opera), Samson and Delilah'' (1877), the Violin Concerto No. 3 (Saint-Saëns), Third Violin Concerto (1880), the Symphony No. 3 (Saint-Saëns), Third ("Organ") Symphony (1886) and ''The Carnival of the Animals'' (1886). Saint-Saëns was a musical prodigy; he made his concert debut at the age of ten. After studying at the Paris Conservatoire he followed a conventional career as a church organist, first at Saint-Merri, Paris and, from 1858, La Madeleine, Paris, La Madeleine, the official church of the Second French Empire, Fr ...
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Symphony No
A symphony is an extended musical composition in Western classical music, most often for orchestra. Although the term has had many meanings from its origins in the ancient Greek era, by the late 18th century the word had taken on the meaning common today: a work usually consisting of multiple distinct sections or movements, often four, with the first movement in sonata form. Symphonies are almost always scored for an orchestra consisting of a string section (violin, viola, cello, and double bass), brass, woodwind, and percussion instruments which altogether number about 30 to 100 musicians. Symphonies are notated in a musical score, which contains all the instrument parts. Orchestral musicians play from parts which contain just the notated music for their own instrument. Some symphonies also contain vocal parts (e.g., Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, or Mahler's Second Symphony). Etymology and origins The word ''symphony'' is derived from the Greek word (), meaning ...
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Antonín Dvořák
Antonín Leopold Dvořák ( ; ; 8September 18411May 1904) was a Czech composer. He frequently employed rhythms and other aspects of the folk music of Moravia and his native Bohemia, following the Romantic-era nationalist example of his predecessor Bedřich Smetana. Dvořák's style has been described as "the fullest recreation of a national idiom with that of the symphonic tradition, absorbing folk influences and finding effective ways of using them," and Dvořák has been described as "arguably the most versatile... composer of his time". Dvořák displayed his musical gifts at an early age, being a talented violin student. The first public performances of his works were in Prague in 1872 and, with special success, in 1873, when he was 31 years old. Seeking recognition beyond the Prague area, he submitted scores of symphonies and other works to German and Austrian competitions. He did not win a prize until 1874, with Johannes Brahms on the jury of the Austrian State Competit ...
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Percy Pitt
Percy Pitt (4 January 1869 – 23 November 1932) was an England, English organist, Conductor (music), conductor, composer, and Director of Music of the BBC from 1924 to 1930. Biography A native of London, Pitt studied music in Europe at the University of Music and Theatre Leipzig, Leipzig conservatory with Carl Reinecke and Salomon Jadassohn,James Duff Brown, Stephen Samuel Stratton. ''British Musical Biography'' (1897), p. 321 then at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater München, Royal Academy of Music in Munich with Josef Rheinberger, and for six months in Berlin. Returning home in 1893, he became associated with the Queen's Hall which Robert Newman (impresario), Robert Newman (an old family friend) had helped to build in 1893 and put on the first series of Promenade Concerts there in 1895. Pitt took over as accompanist at Queen's Hall in 1896 and accompanied the sung solo items at the first of Henry Wood's Prom concerts in August 1897.
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John Reith, 1st Baron Reith
John Charles Walsham Reith, 1st Baron Reith (; 20 July 1889 – 16 June 1971) was a Scottish broadcasting executive who established the tradition of independent public service broadcasting in the United Kingdom. In 1922, he was employed by the BBC, then the British Broadcasting Company, British Broadcasting Company Ltd., as its general manager; in 1923 he became its managing director, and in 1927 he was employed as the Director-General of the BBC, British Broadcasting Corporation created under a royal charter. His concept of broadcasting as a way of educating the masses marked for a long time the BBC and similar organisations around the world. An engineer by profession, and standing at tall, he was a larger-than-life figure who was a pioneer in his field. Early life Born at Stonehaven, Kincardineshire, Reith was the fifth son and the youngest, by ten years, of the seven children of the Rev. George Reith, a Scottish Presbyterian minister of the College Church at Glasgow and late ...
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