The Birmingham Symphony Orchestra was a professional symphony orchestra based in Birmingham, England between 1906 and 1918. [1]
The orchestra was founded as a self-governing organisation run on cooperative lines by musicians from George Halford's Orchestra, [2] which had been performing annual series of concerts in Birmingham since 1897. [3] George Halford remained the new orchestra's Music Director, though he would only conduct half of their concerts. [4] The new body included fifty of the musicians from the previous organisation. [5]
The inaugural concert took place in Birmingham Town Hall on 4 April 1906 and was conducted by Henry Wood, [5] with further concerts in the 1906-1907 season being conducted by Halford, Hans Richter and Landon Ronald, and the Musical Times describing as a "splendid concert" a performance conducted by Halford in March 1907. [2] For the 1907-1908 and 1908-1909 seasons concerts by the BSO were promoted under the auspices of the "Birmingham Concerts Society" and took place on Tuesday evenings, conducted by Halford, Frederick Cowen, Charles Stanford, Allen Gill and Henri Verbrugghen. [6] From July 1910 it was the "Birmingham Philharmonic Society" that promoted eight concerts a year featuring the BSO players and conductors including Halford, Wood, Ronald, George Henschel, Vasily Safonov, Thomas Beecham and Fritz Cassirer. [7]
The orchestra also gave popular Saturday night concerts at the Town Hall that continued until 1918, [8] and performed widely alongside many different choral societies with conductors including Edward Elgar, Henry Coward and George Robertson Sinclair. [5]
Although there was no institutional connection between the Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and the later City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, [5] fifteen of the players who founded the earlier organisation in 1906 would also play with the later orchestra when it was established in 1920. [9]
Sir Adrian Cedric Boult, CH was a British conductor. Brought up in a prosperous mercantile family, he followed musical studies in England and at Leipzig, Germany, with early conducting work in London for the Royal Opera House and Sergei Diaghilev's ballet company. His first prominent post was conductor of the City of Birmingham Orchestra in 1924. When the British Broadcasting Corporation appointed him director of music in 1930, he established the BBC Symphony Orchestra and became its chief conductor. The orchestra set standards of excellence that were rivalled in Britain only by the London Philharmonic Orchestra (LPO), founded two years later.
The City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra (CBSO) is a British orchestra based in Birmingham, England. It is the resident orchestra at Symphony Hall, Birmingham in Birmingham, which has been its principal performance venue since 1991. Its administrative and rehearsal base is at the nearby CBSO Centre, where it also presents chamber concerts by members of the orchestra and guest performers.
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Sir Granville Ransome Bantock was a British composer of classical music.
Seiji Ozawa was a Japanese conductor known internationally for his work as music director of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, the San Francisco Symphony, and especially the Boston Symphony Orchestra (BSO), where he served from 1973 for 29 years. After conducting the Vienna New Year's Concert in 2002, he was director of the Vienna State Opera until 2010. In Japan, he founded the Saito Kinen Orchestra in 1984, their festival in 1992, and the Tokyo Opera Nomori in 2005.
Karl Muck was a Hessian-born conductor of classical music. He based his activities principally in Europe and mostly in opera. His American career comprised two stints at the Boston Symphony Orchestra (BSO). Muck endured a trial by media in 1917, after Providence Journal editor John R. Rathom falsely accused him of knowingly refusing a request to have the BSO play the Star Spangled Banner following American entry into World War I. Although Muck was a citizen of neutral Switzerland, he was arrested based on Rathom's accusation and incarcerated as an enemy alien at Fort Oglethorpe, a German-American internment camp in Georgia from March 1918 until August 1919. Karl Muck and his wife were then deported from the United States. His later career included notable engagements in Hamburg and at the Bayreuth Festival.
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Classical music in Birmingham began in the late Middle Ages, mainly devotional music which did not survive the Reformation. Evidence is scant until the years following the Restoration of the Monarchy in 1660, when Birmingham's economy boomed. This was reflected in the scientific and cultural awakening known as the Midlands Enlightenment. The first sign of this transformation was the opening of the baroque St Philip's Church in 1715, which had a fine organ that attracted gifted musicians to the town.
George Halford's Orchestra was a professional symphony orchestra based in Birmingham, England from 1897 to 1907 and an important precursor of the later City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra.
George John Halford was an English pianist, organist, composer and conductor.
The British Symphony Orchestra is the name of a number of symphony orchestras, active in both concert halls and recording studios, which have existed at various times in Britain since c1905 until the present day.
William Stockley's Orchestra was a symphony orchestra based in Birmingham, England from 1856 to 1899. It was the first permanent orchestra formed of local musicians to be established in the town, in contrast to the earlier Birmingham Festival Orchestra, which consisted largely of outside musicians and only performed during the Birmingham Triennial Music Festival.
The New Birmingham Orchestra, sometimes called simply the Birmingham Orchestra, was a professional symphony orchestra established by Thomas Beecham and based in Birmingham, England between 1917 and 1919. Although it was short-lived, it was succeeded the year after its dissolution by what is now the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, which was run in its early days by many of the same individuals.
William Cole Stockley was an English organist, choirmaster and conductor.