Kensington Symphony Orchestra

Last updated

KSO Kensington Symphony Orchestra logo medium.gif
KSO

Founded in 1956, London's Kensington Symphony Orchestra is a non-professional orchestra in Britain. It attracts non-professional players from around London for its concerts at St John's, Smith Square, Cadogan Hall, Queen Elizabeth Hall and other venues in the city. [1] Its concerts are financed through ticket sales, charitable donations and corporate support, and through subscription fees paid by members of the orchestra.

Contents

History

KSO has only had two principal conductors — its founder, Leslie Head, [2] and the current conductor, Russell Keable who has been with the orchestra since 1983. [3]

Under Leslie Head

All the main orchestras in those days were doing very boring programmes, really, rarely anything unusual—and in a way I think we helped to change that.

— Leslie Head

Head was a 33-year-old freelance horn player and part-time conductor when he first assembled Kensington Symphony Orchestra at Queen Alexandra House, next door to the Royal Albert Hall and across the road from the Royal College of Music in Kensington. Head’s original concept was that this would be a repertoire orchestra, one that provided conservatoire students with the opportunity to read through pieces they might not have otherwise set eyes on before professional auditions. He stated, "When I was a student we had three hours of orchestra a week, the same amount that the college were doing in 1850—and look what had happened to music in those 100 years!" The first Saturday-morning session in May 1956 was spent tackling works including Brahms’s First Symphony and Strauss’s Till Eulenspiegel's Merry Pranks , along with some Schumann.

A début programme was scheduled for 5 December 1956. However, KSO’s first appearance actually came a couple of days earlier, when Head was asked to put on a last-minute performance at Hove Town Hall in support of the Hungarian Relief Fund. The clarinet section for the first concert consisted of Alan Hacker and Paul Harvey—both familiar names to today’s clarinettists—and a young Royal Artillery bandsman called Harrison Birtwistle. In honour of the Hungarian cause, the programme included Bartók’s Piano Concerto No. 3, which was written ten years earlier.

In 1961 KSO performed the UK premiere of the original 1901 version of Schoenberg’s Gurre-Lieder . The huge forces this required put it way beyond the capacity and budget of most groups employing professionals. This, Head thought, was exactly where KSO should be coming in. Not everyone agreed. "I wrote to the Arts Council to ask for an extra £100," he remembers. “And they answered saying that I shouldn’t even be attempting a work like this, and that they had told the National Association of Music Societies not to give us anything either.” The performance went ahead regardless.

Prokofiev’s Alexander Nevsky received an early UK performance from KSO at the 1963 St Pancras Festival; several now-standard works including Bernstein’s Symphonic Dances from West Side Story, Mahler’s Das Klagende Lied and Puccini’s Messa di Gloria were introduced to UK audiences by KSO. As the orchestra for Opera Viva, another of Head’s brainchildren, KSO (in all but name—the sponsoring Fulham council insisted they dropped the "Kensington") performed in exhumations of early Wagner, Verdi and Donizetti operas with distinguished singers including Pauline Tinsley and the young John Tomlinson.

Under Russell Keable

In the 1983-4 season, Head retired as KSO’s music director and handed over to Russell Keable. The 30th anniversary concert in 1986 was celebrated with an all-British programme of Walton, Bax, Stanford and Wilfred Josephs in the Queen Elizabeth Hall. This marked KSO’s South Bank début. “It was,” says Keable, “also a milestone in terms of performance quality.” At around this time the orchestra began to give concerts in St John's, Smith Square. “It was a really happy orchestra, and that was absolutely key in its development. If an orchestra is happy socialising it will play better,” said Keable.

Today, around half of the orchestra's six concerts each year are at St John's Smith Square, with visits to Cadogan Hall, Queen Elizabeth Hall, Barbican, Milton Court and Fairfield Halls. The four woodwind principals have around 100 years of service between them. Many are National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain alumni, people who chose not to turn professional as players, and many are employed in the music industry in other capacities.

Anniversaries

Kensington Symphony Orchestra celebrated its 50th anniversary on 18 October 2006 with a concert at London's Barbican with a programme including Prokofiev's cantata Alexander Nevsky and Rachmaninov's piano concerto no.2 with soloist Nikolai Demidenko. [4] [5] On 15 May 2017 the orchestra marked its 60th anniversary with a concert at the Barbican of the world premiere of Matthew Taylor's 4th symphony and Mahler's Symphony no.2 "Resurrection". [6]

Repertoire and programming

New music

In 2004 KSO commissioned and premiered Hovercraft by Joby Talbot, which he then incorporated into the ballet Chroma by the Royal Ballet in 2007. Also in 2004, the orchestra together with the BBC Concert Orchestra premiered Errollyn Wallen’s Spirit Symphony – Speed-Dating for Two Orchestras, conducted by Russell Keable and broadcast live on BBC Radio 3. That performance won the BBC 3 Listeners’ Award in 2005.

Works by John Woolrich, Peter Maxwell Davies, Robin Holloway, Colin Matthews and David Matthews have also featured in recent years, often in their London or UK premières."An amateur orchestra can be simply there for the indulgence of its members, or it can try to do things that professional orchestras either can’t or don’t want to," says Keable. "It can try to make a difference."

Other contemporary composers performed in recent years by the orchestra include John Adams, Thomas Adès, Richard Ayres, Charlotte Bray, Anna Clyne, Brett Dean, Seán Doherty, Helen Grime, HK Gruber, Magnus Lindberg, James McMillan, Joseph Phibbs, Joan Tower, Huw Watkins and Judith Weir.

Opera and oratorio

In 1996, Korngold’s opera, Die tote Stadt , received its UK premiere in a concert performance by Kensington Symphony Orchestra conducted by Russell Keable at Queen Elizabeth Hall, with Ian Caley (Paul) and Christine Teare (Marie/Marietta), thirteen years before the first UK staged performance at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden. This was followed in 2002 by a double bill of Lili Boulanger's Faust et Hélène and Korngold's Violanta at Queen Elizabeth Hall.

Head’s longstanding tradition of programming unusual or neglected works by British composers has been maintained—perhaps most obviously in the premiere recording of Sir Henry Walford Davies’ once-famous cantata Everyman , made with the London Oriana Choir in 2004. [7] That recording was Gramophone Magazine's Editor’s Choice in February 2005. [8] In 2007, at Cadogan Hall, the Kensington Symphony Orchestra, once again under Russell Keable's baton, accompanied Myleene Klass, Alfie Boe, Natasha Marsh and Natalie Clein for EMI Classics, in a concert celebrating the 10th anniversary of the EMI Music Sound Foundation.

Concert performances of Puccini's operas Tosca on 14 May 2012 and La bohème on 21 May 2018 took place at St John's Smith Square, the latter with Monica McGhee as Mimí, Nico Darmanin as Rodolfo, Hazel McBain as Musetta and Nicholas Morris as Marcello. [9]

Related Research Articles

The Guildhall School of Music and Drama is a music and drama school located in the City of London, England. Established in 1880, the school offers undergraduate and postgraduate training in all aspects of classical music and jazz along with drama and production arts. The school has students from over seventy countries. It was ranked first in both the Guardian’s 2022 League Table for Music and the Complete University Guide's 2023 Arts, Drama and Music league table. It is also ranked the sixth university in the world for performing arts in the 2022 QS World University Rankings.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Royal College of Music</span> College in Kensington and Chelsea, UK

The Royal College of Music is a conservatoire established by royal charter in 1882, located in South Kensington, London, UK. It offers training from the undergraduate to the doctoral level in all aspects of Western Music including performance, composition, conducting, music theory and history, and has trained some of the most important figures in international music life. The RCM also undertakes research, with particular strengths in performance practice and performance science.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Thomas Adès</span> British composer, pianist and conductor

Thomas Joseph Edmund Adès is a British composer, pianist and conductor. Five compositions by Adès received votes in the 2017 Classic Voice poll of the greatest works of art music since 2000: The Tempest (2004), Violin Concerto (2005), Tevot (2007), In Seven Days (2008), and Polaris (2010).

The BBC Symphony Chorus is a British amateur chorus based in London. It is the dedicated chorus for the BBC Symphony Orchestra, though it performs with other national and international orchestras.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Culture of London</span> Overview of the culture in London

London has, alongside New York, been described as the cultural capital of the world. The culture of London concerns the music, museums, festivals, and lifestyle within London, the capital city of the United Kingdom. London is one of the world's leading business centres, renowned for its technological readiness and economic clout, as well as attracting the most foreign investment of any global city.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">London Gay Men's Chorus</span>

London Gay Men's Chorus is a gay choir that was founded in 1991 by a group of nine gay men. The group now has around 150 singing members at any one time and almost 300 members in total.

Dame Judith Weir is a British composer serving as Master of the King's Music. Appointed in 2014 by Queen Elizabeth II, Weir is the first woman to hold this office.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mats Lidström</span>

Mats Lidström is a Swedish solo cellist, recording artist, chamber musician, composer, teacher and publisher.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Alexander Frey</span> Musical artist

Alexander Frey, KM, KStJ, is an American symphony orchestra conductor, virtuoso organist, pianist, harpsichordist and composer. Frey is in great demand as one of the world's most versatile conductors, and enjoys success in the concert hall and opera house, and in the music of Broadway and Hollywood. Leonard Bernstein referred to him as "a wonderful spirit".

Tolga Kashif is a British born musical conductor, composer, orchestrator, producer and arranger of Turkish Cypriot descent.

Mark Grey is an American classical music composer, sound designer and sound engineer.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">New London Children's Choir</span>

The New London Children's Choir was a children's choir which rehearsed at Highgate Primary School in North London and, latterly, All Hallows, Gospel Oak, giving singing opportunities to members aged seven to eighteen. Members were from London and surrounding areas. It was founded in 1991 by Artistic Director Ronald Corp and held its last rehearsal in July 2022. As well as performing its own concerts, the choir sang with orchestras and ensembles in many concert halls and opera houses worldwide and features on several film and TV soundtracks and CDs.

The Philharmonia Chorus is an independent self-governing symphony chorus based in London, UK. Since its foundation in 1957 the Chorus has given over 900 concerts and made over 100 recordings. The Chorus Master is Gavin Carr.

Docklands Sinfonia is a symphony orchestra in London's Docklands. Since January 2009, the orchestra has been based at St Anne's Limehouse near Canary Wharf.

Iain Sutherland is a British conductor. In 1966 he was appointed Conductor of the BBC Scottish Radio Orchestra) in Glasgow. Previously he had been an orchestral and session violinist in London playing in the LPO, Philharmonia, RPO and ECO under such conductors as Boult, Sargent, Groves, Solti and Klemperer. Sutherland was the conductor of the BBC Scottish Radio Orchestra until a major restructuring was initiated by BBC in 1972 to reduce its coverage of "light" music, in favour of "pop" music. His remit with the BBC SRO included TV as well as Radio. He was Musical Director for many Light Entertainment series with Stanley Baxter, Kenneth McKellar, Moira Anderson and Andy Stewart The orchestra was officially closed in 1981.

Russell Keable is a British educator, composer and conductor. Keable studied conducting at the Royal College of Music with Norman Del Mar and later with George Hurst. Since 1983, he has been the principal conductor of London's Kensington Symphony Orchestra, and since 2006, the principal conductor of the University of Surrey's University Symphony Orchestra and Choir. Since 2006, Keable has taught conducting at the University of Surrey.

The London Oriana Choir is a choral group comprising around 120 singers, based in London, England. It was formed in 1973 by Leon Lovett, who acted as conductor and musical director. David Drummond became the choir's musical director in 1996, and Dominic Ellis-Peckham began his term as musical director in September 2013. The choir has developed a following through performances at London venues including the Royal Albert Hall, Barbican Centre, Royal Festival Hall and Queen Elizabeth Hall at Southbank, St Paul's Cathedral, St Martin-in-the-Fields and St James' Piccadilly. In 2016 the choir launched a five-year project 'Five 15' to promote the work of women composers with 15 new commissions from five composers, workshops and recordings. The five commissioned composers-in-residence were Cheryl Frances-Hoad (2016/17), Rebecca Dale (2017/18), Jessica Curry (2018/19), Anna Disley-Simpson (2019-2021), and Hannah Kendall (2021/22). Composer Cecilia McDowall accepted the role of Patron of the choir in 2021. The choir celebrates its 50th Anniversary in the 2023/24 season and has commissioned a new piece from Cecilia McDowall, to be premiered at a gala concert at St John's Smith Square in March 2024.

Wissam Boustany is a Lebanese/British concert flutist. Boustany has toured and collaborated with a number of symphony and chamber orchestras. Conductors Boustany has worked with include Claudio Abbado, Ivan Fischer, Bramwell Tovey, John Elliot Gardiner, Roger Norrington, Georg Solti, Peter Szilvay, Lubnan Baalbaki, James Judd, Jordi Mora, Volodymyr Sirenko, Levon Parikian, Nicholas Cleobury, Martyn Brabbins, Michel Brandt, Varujan Kodjan, Clark Rundell, Jerzy Maksymiuk, Evelyne Aiello, Ludwig Carrasco, Nader Abbassi, Andrew Morley and Toby Purser. He is a recipient of The Crystal Award, awarded to him in 1998 at the World Economic Forum, Davos, Switzerland.

Grace-Evangeline Mason is a British composer of contemporary classical music.

References

  1. ↑ "Welcome". kso.org.uk. Kensington Symphony Orchestra. Retrieved 10 October 2017.
  2. ↑ "Leslie Head obituary". independent.co.uk. The Independent. 27 October 2013. Retrieved 29 April 2022.
  3. ↑ "History". kso.org.uk. Kensington Symphony Orchestra. Retrieved 10 October 2017.
  4. ↑ "Concert on 18 October 2006". kso.org.uk. Kensington Symphony Orchestra. Retrieved 13 October 2020.
  5. ↑ "Kensington Symphony Orchestra Golden Anniversary Celebrations". classicalsource.com. The Classical Source. October 2006. Retrieved 13 October 2020.
  6. ↑ "Concert on 15 May 2017". kso.org.uk. Kensington Symphony Orchestra. Retrieved 13 October 2020.
  7. ↑ "Sir Henry Walford Davies - Everyman". duttonvocalion.co.uk. Dutton Vocalion . Retrieved 30 October 2017.
  8. ↑ "Editor's Choice". Gramophone . Haymarket Media Group. February 2005. Archived from the original on 23 November 2006. Retrieved 30 October 2017.
  9. ↑ "Concert on 21 May 2018". kso.org.uk. Kensington Symphony Orchestra. Retrieved 13 October 2020.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.