British Composers and the BBC

[Dundonnell]

I am coming to the end of a fortnight of working my way through around 130 British orchestral and choral compositions which I recorded from BBC Radio over an eight year period: 1973-81.

One point which has come over very forcefully to me is the sheer quantity of British music which was played by the BBC Radio Orchestras at that time.

I had a look back to the 1970s and reminded myself that the situation at that time was-

BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra: Principal Conductor:  James Loughran, 1965-71
                                                                                         Christopher Seaman, 1971-77

BBC Northern Symphony Orchestra: Principal Conductor: Bryden Thomson, 1968-73
                                                                                          Raymond Leppard, 1973-80

BBC Welsh Symphony Orchestra: Principal Conductor: John Carewe, 1966-71
                                                                                     Boris Brott, 1972-78
                                                                                     Bryden Thomson, 1979-82

BBC Northern Ireland Orchestra:  Principal Conductor: Alun Francis, 1974-77
                                                                                      Bryden Thomson, 1977-85
      (Ulster Orchestra from 1981)

BBC Training Orchestra, became Academy of the B.B.C.: Principal Conductor: Meredith Davies, 1969-72
                                                                                                                         Norman Del Mar, 1974-77
      (disbanded 1977)
In addition:
London Symphony Orchestra:                 Principal Conductor: Andre Previn, 1968-79
Halle Orchestra:                                      Principal Conductor: James Loughran, 1971-83
Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra: Principal Conductor: Sir Charles Groves, 1963-77
Scottish National Orchestra:                   Principal Conductor: Sir Alexander Gibson, 1959-84

Contrast that with the situation today when only the Halle(Sir Mark Elder), BBC Scottish SO(Donald Runnicles) and the Ulster Orchestra(Kenneth Montgomery) have home-grown principal conductors. There are 3 Russians(Gergiev, Jurowski, Petrenko), 1 Ukrainian(Karabits) and 1 Latvian(Nelsons) in charge of major British orchestras.

Now...please don't get me wrong. I have huge respect for most if not all of these brilliant and, by and large, young or youngish, conductors from Eastern Europe. Their talent and what they are doing for their orchestras and for music is inestimable.

It is simply that in these changed circumstances British music is unlikely to enjoy the attention it had a few decades ago.

[semloh]

Couldn't agree more, Dundonnell. My 70s and 80s BBC tapes were just packed with music by British composers -whether it was studio performances, live concerts, premieres, or just music played from LPs - there was an endless stream. It included many premieres, and many works which are still not available on CD. Local culture tends to be a casualty of globalization; as you say, conductors and entrepreneurs coming in from outside the country - while bringing new and interesting ideas - don't have that same sense of commitment to the national corpus, and far less knowledge.

It's been one of my recurring gripes of the siuation here in Australia. European conductors usually head up our major orchestras, and run seasons of Mahler, Beethoven, Brahms, etc, but know nothing our of Australian composers (as per the Australian thread here), and that reflects in the ABC's choices for broadcasting and recording.

The BBC, though still a great institution, is not what it was.

[albion]

Very pertinent, Colin. There has been a sea-change since the 1970s in terms of a culture of performing native music, especially within the BBC: if anybody disputes this, the figures that Colin quotes stand testimony to a quite blatant side-lining of whole swathes of repertoire.

Whether this is down to ignorance, apathy, economics or 'audience-chasing' it is hard to say - probably a most unfortunate combination of all four. I think we can say without fear of contradiction that the BBC will never again broadcast self-instigated performances of at least 130 substantial British compositions (many contemporary) over an eight-year period.

An important point to consider is that many of these conductors would have been closely acquainted with the very composers whose repertoire they were conducting, having encountered them at provincial concerts and festivals. This sort of relationship doesn't seem to happen today, at least not on the same scale. At the same time as opportunities for the exposure of 'new' music have contracted, the recorded corpus of music has swelled exponentially to a point where a broadcaster such as the BBC has now no need to fill its programmes with live performances of 'unusual' (possibly British) repertoire - there are more than enough discs readily and cheaply available of more 'esoteric' works that can be simply fed into a machine.

[Dundonnell]

Conductors like Christopher Seaman, Meredith Davies, Norman Del Mar, James Loughran, Bryden Thomson , Raymond Leppard and Norman Del Mar as well as other figures from that time such as Vernon Handley, Maurice Handford were not glamorous jet-setters.

They were however at the very least sound professionals who could be relied on to give a well-prepared performance of unusual repertoire and, at their best, as in the case of Del Mar or Thomson or Handley could rise to the heights in an interpretation.

Above all-like that great and now under-rated figure Charles Groves-they shared a commitment to British music. I would like to be able to say that of a comparable group of conductors today. I don't think I can

[Dundonnell]

......OK, I am being unfair to people like Martyn Brabbins and Martin Yates and Gary Walker...

Maybe there is some hope


But none of these has his own orchestra.

[britishcomposer]

Above all-like that great and now under-rated figure Charles Groves-they shared a commitment to British music. I would like to be able to say that of a comparable group of conductors today. I don't think I can

BTW, a few months ago I bought the score of Finzi's Nocturne (New Year Music) op. 7 from an online store. It was declared as used and very cheap, so I was surprised to find a mark on it which said 'Property of Charles Groves'!
The dealer assured me afterwards that it belonged to the great conducter indeed!
Unfortunately the score didn't contain any annotations by Groves.
Does anyone of you know if he ever performed of even recorded the piece?

[Dundonnell]

Above all-like that great and now under-rated figure Charles Groves-they shared a commitment to British music. I would like to be able to say that of a comparable group of conductors today. I don't think I can

BTW, a few months ago I bought the score of Finzi's Nocturne (New Year Music) op. 7 from an online store. It was declared as used and very cheap, so I was surprised to find a mark on it which said 'Property of Charles Groves'!
The dealer assured me afterwards that it belonged to the great conducter indeed!
Unfortunately the score didn't contain any annotations by Groves.
Does anyone of you know if he ever performed of even recorded the piece?

He never recorded it.

[albion]

Conductors like Christopher Seaman, Meredith Davies, Norman Del Mar, James Loughran, Bryden Thomson , Raymond Leppard and Norman Del Mar [...] were however at the very least sound professionals who could be relied on to give a well-prepared performance of unusual repertoire and, at their best, as in the case of Del Mar or Thomson or Handley could rise to the heights in an interpretation.

The contents of Bryden Thomson's personal library are an interesting demonstration of his versatility and wide-ranging sympathies-

http://catalogue.nli.ie/Author/Home?author=Thomson%2C%20Bryden%201928-1991

[albion]

... and, from the next generation, wouldn't it be fascinating to be able to read the spines of what's on these shelves -



- in a publicity photograph taken at the conductor's house.

[J.Z. Herrenberg]

The contents of Bryden Thomson's personal library are an interesting demonstration of his versatility and wide-ranging sympathies-

http://catalogue.nli.ie/Author/Home?author=Thomson%2C%20Bryden%201928-1991

The man had two Havergal Brian scores - the tone-poems Doctor Merryheart and In Memoriam, both published in 1913. 

[albion]

It is of great value that Bryden Thomson's collection of music has remained, probably largely intact, in the NLI.

Over the years I've picked up a number of interesting scores ex-libris Norman del Mar, including Holbrooke's Gwyn ap Nudd Concerto and Rubbra's 9th Symphony (The Resurrection) from several different dealers so it appears that his collection was dispersed in quite an arbitrary manner after his death. This seems a pity as we lose an insight into what a conductor deemed worthy of possession. It would be interesting to find out what music Charles Groves owned - the NLW only appears to have his presentation copies of Daniel Jones' printed scores.

I would hazard a guess that Vernon Handley's library was quite something!

[eschiss1]

Have seen at least an article or two on the contents of composers, conductors (and composer/conductors' ) libraries - one on Hindemith's Swiss library a few years back; only skimmed it at the time I regret to say- I recall that Wellesz' 4th string quartet was listed.
As to the main topic of the thread, an edition of the Jullien symphony (no.2) of Bristow has in its preface historical background regarding the perceived (probably real, but perception definitely important and to the point) disadvantages American composers faced with their own orchestras at the time and some of  the perceived reasons for it (often, cliques of "imported" German and other foreign musicians who feeling lost in the orchestras bonded with each other and encouraged performance of their national music- that was the explanation I gather was current then, if I am right, or an explanation.) 

An article written a century or so after the premiere of the Bristow,  now by Arnold Schoenberg, responded to a critic- who had lamented the displacement of a (hypothetical) Boston composer by a foreign composer (Schoenberg) in a program - responded with several points (which can be read in the collection "Style and Idea" in which the brief article is reprinted. He spoke of how long, I think, it was before a major or relatively major orchestra took up his works- one knows that he compensated by convincing musicians and recruiting his pupils to create an orchestra of their own for chamber works and reductions, an option open to other musicians too to some extent.  He also noted that in his opinion anyway the best thing you could do for a composer was not perform their works - especially if all one was going to do was perform them once and leave them aside, as too often happened - but rather, become their (the composer's, the works' ) advocate. (Indeed, when successful this leads to more frequent and better performances anyway.)

[Dundonnell]

Actually the situation is "worse" than I wrote previously-

JoAnn Falletta is now Principal Conductor of the Ulster Orchestra(in succession to Kenneth Montgomery).

Now Ms Falletta is an excellent and enterprising American conductor but that leaves only 2 out of 15 British orchestras with British conductors.

[albion]

that leaves only 2 out of 15 British orchestras with British conductors.

And with the passing of Groves, Meredith, Handley, Hickox et al., the turn-over amongst players, and the dispersal of provincial orchestral libraries (often offered to dealers in the hope of raising funds) there is now neither the awareness of British repertoire nor the ready means to promote it.

[semloh]

that leaves only 2 out of 15 British orchestras with British conductors.

And with the passing of Groves, Meredith, Handley, Hickox et al., the turn-over amongst players, and the dispersal of provincial orchestral libraries (often offered to dealers in the hope of raising funds) there is now neither the awareness of British repertoire nor the ready means to promote it.

By way of comparison, can I just add that in Australia we have six major symphony orchestras and not one is conducted by an Australian!  With similar consequences to the above...  

Our two quite brilliant chamber orchestras, the Australian Brandenburg Orchestra and the Australian Chamber Orchestra, both have Australians as Artistic Directors - Paul Dyer and Richard Tognetti respectively. They are both wonderful musicians and great ambassadors for classical music, but their repertoire is almost wholly European, and they (Tognetti in particular) mostly learned their craft in Europe.

The Queensland SO has an Australian composer in residence - Elena Kats-Chernin.