The conductor Malcolm Sargent's career as a recording artist began in the days of acoustic recording, shortly before the introduction of the microphone and electrical recording, and continued into the stereo LP era. He recorded prolifically from 1924 until 1967, the year of his death.
Sargent's debut recording was Vaughan Williams's Hugh the Drover , in 1924, for His Master's Voice, with singers from the British National Opera Company, with whom he was then performing the work on tour. [1] Although he recorded for other companies, most of his records were made for HMV over the following four decades. [2]
In the early days of electrical recording, he took part in pioneering live recordings with the Royal Choral Society at the Albert Hall. Subsequently, in the recording studio, Sargent was most in demand to record English music, choral works and concertos. He recorded and worked with many orchestras, but made the most recordings (several dozen major pieces) with the BBC Symphony Orchestra, the London Symphony Orchestra, the Philharmonia Orchestra and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. In the recording studio, as in the concert hall, Sargent was known for his choral conducting and was in demand as an accompanist in concertos. A high proportion of the recordings listed below are in these categories.
Sargent's choral work was chiefly with the two choirs of which he was the principal conductor, the Royal Choral Society and the Huddersfield Choral Society. For his recordings with the latter, Sargent usually conducted the Liverpool Philharmonic (from 1957, the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic); the pairing of the choir and orchestra became so familiar that the portmanteau word "Hudderspool" was coined for it. [3] Sargent's choral recordings included two versions of Elgar's The Dream of Gerontius , four of Handel's Messiah , two of Mendelssohn's Elijah , and complete sets of Coleridge-Taylor's Hiawatha's Wedding Feast and The Death of Minnehaha , Delius's Songs of Farewell, Handel's Israel in Egypt , Holst's The Hymn of Jesus , Vaughan Williams's Serenade to Music and Walton's Belshazzar's Feast . Some of these have been reissued on compact disc, including both Gerontius sets, three of the Messiah recordings, one of the Elijahs, and Belshazzar's Feast.
As a concerto accompanist, Sargent recorded with, among many others, Fritz Kreisler, Artur Schnabel, Jascha Heifetz, Albert Sammons, Clifford Curzon, David Oistrakh, Mstislav Rostropovich, Paul Tortelier, and Jacqueline du Pré. His pre-war recordings with Schnabel of the Beethoven piano concertos have been reissued on compact disc. His association with Heifetz spanned the 78 r.p.m., mono LP and stereo LP eras, and many of their recordings are also available in CD transfers.
Throughout his career, Sargent remained devoted to Gilbert and Sullivan and made 21 recordings of their operas in four different decades. His earliest and last recordings of these works were with the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company for HMV in the 1920s and 30s and for Decca in the 1960s. In the 1950s and early 60s he conducted a series of Gilbert and Sullivan recordings for HMV, casting singers from opera and oratorio, rather than the D'Oyly Carte. All of his Gilbert and Sullivan recordings have been re-released on compact disc, and most remain in the catalogues.
The sources for this discography are primarily The Gramophone , 1924 onwards; the discography published in Sir Malcolm Sargent: a tribute. (1967). London: Daily Mirror Newspapers, and A Gilbert and Sullivan Discography.
The following abbreviations are used in this list.
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 Orchestra because of a new rule requiring players to give the orchestra their exclusive services. The LSO itself later introduced a similar rule for its members. From the outset the LSO was organised on co-operative lines, with all players sharing the profits at the end of each season. This practice continued for the orchestra's first four decades.
The London Philharmonic Orchestra (LPO) is one of five permanent symphony orchestras based in London. It was founded by the conductors Sir Thomas Beecham and Malcolm Sargent in 1932 as a rival to the existing London Symphony and BBC Symphony Orchestras.
The Philharmonia Orchestra is a British orchestra based in London. It was founded in 1945 by Walter Legge, a classical music record producer for EMI. Among the conductors who worked with the orchestra in its early years were Richard Strauss, Wilhelm Furtwängler and Arturo Toscanini; of the Philharmonia's younger conductors, the most important to its development was Herbert von Karajan who, though never formally chief conductor, was closely associated with the orchestra in the late 1940s and early 1950s. The Philharmonia became widely regarded as the finest of London's five symphony orchestras in its first two decades.
The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra (RPO) is a British orchestra based in London.
Charles Édouard Dutoit is a Swiss conductor. He is currently the principal guest conductor for the Saint Petersburg Philharmonia and co-director of the MISA Festival in Shanghai. In 2017, he became the 103rd recipient of the Royal Philharmonic Society Gold Medal Award. Dutoit held previous positions with the London Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal, the Tokyo NHK Symphony and the Orchestre National de France. As of 2017, conductor emeritus of the Verbier Music Festival Orchestra. He is an honorary member of the Ravel Foundation in France and the Stravinsky Foundation in Switzerland. In December 2017, following allegations of sexual assault, the Boston and San Francisco Symphonies cancelled his engagements. In a statement, Dutoit denied the charges.
Sir Harold Malcolm Watts Sargent was an English conductor, organist and composer widely regarded as Britain's leading conductor of choral works. The musical ensembles with which he was associated included the Ballets Russes, the Huddersfield Choral Society, the Royal Choral Society, the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company, and the London Philharmonic, Hallé, Liverpool Philharmonic, BBC Symphony and Royal Philharmonic orchestras. Sargent was held in high esteem by choirs and instrumental soloists, but because of his high standards and a statement that he made in a 1936 interview disputing musicians' rights to tenure, his relationship with orchestral players was often uneasy. Despite this, he was co-founder of the London Philharmonic, was the first conductor of the Liverpool Philharmonic as a full-time ensemble, and played an important part in saving the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra from disbandment in the 1960s.
The Gramophone Classical Music Awards, launched in 1977, are one of the most significant honours bestowed on recordings in the classical record industry. They are often viewed as equivalent to or surpassing the American Grammy award, and referred to as the Oscars for classical music. They are widely regarded as the most influential and prestigious classical music awards in the world. According to Matthew Owen, national sales manager for Harmonia Mundi USA, "ultimately it is the classical award, especially worldwide."
The Symphony No. 4 in F minor by Ralph Vaughan Williams was dedicated by the composer to Arnold Bax.
A London Symphony is the second symphony composed by Ralph Vaughan Williams. The work is sometimes referred to as Symphony No. 2, though the composer did not designate that name for the work. First performed in 1914, the original score of this four-movement symphony was lost and subsequently reconstructed. Vaughan Williams continued revisions of the work into its final definitive form, which was published in 1936.
The Kingsway Hall in Holborn, London, was the base of the West London Mission (WLM) of the Methodist Church, and eventually became one of the most important recording venues for classical music and film music. It was built in 1912 and demolished in 1998. Among the prominent Methodists associated with the Kingsway Hall was Donald Soper, who was Superintendent Minister at the West London Mission from 1936 until his retirement in 1978.
Sir Eugene Aynsley Goossens was an English conductor and composer.
This is the discography of Simon Rattle and other produced works by the English conductor.
Selected discography of recordings conducted by Thomas Beecham:
Robert Augustine Irving, DFC*, was a British conductor whose reputation was mainly as a ballet conductor.
Igor Konstantin Buketoff was an American conductor, arranger and teacher. He had a special affinity with Russian music and with Sergei Rachmaninoff in particular. He also strongly promoted British contemporary music, and new music in general.
The English conductor Sir Adrian Boult was a prolific recording artist. Unlike many musicians, he felt at home in the recording studio and actually preferred working without an audience. His recording career ran from November 1920, when working with Diaghilev's Ballets Russes he recorded the ballet music, The Good-Humoured Ladies, to December 1978, when he made his final recording of music by Hubert Parry.
The conductor Pierre Monteux made a large number of recordings throughout his career. His first recording was as a violist in "Plus blanche que la blanche hermine" from Les Huguenots by Meyerbeer in 1903 for Pathé with the tenor Albert Vaguet. His first recording as a conductor was the first of his five recordings of Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring. His last studio recordings were with the London Symphony Orchestra in works by Ravel at Wembley Town Hall at the end of February 1964. He recorded works by more than fifty composers. However, he disliked recording, saying of studio sessions,
You may give an excellently played, genuinely felt performance of a movement, but because the engineer is not satisfied because there is some rustling at one point, so you do it again and this time something else goes wrong. By the time you get a "perfect" take of the recording the players are bored, the conductor is bored, and the performance is lifeless and boring. … I detest all my own records.
Brighton Festival Chorus is a large choir of over 150 amateur singers based in Brighton, UK. One of the country's leading symphony choruses.., and considered "one of the jewels in the city's musical crown", BFC performs in major concert halls throughout Britain and Europe, particularly in Brighton and London.
This discography is an incomplete, chronological list of recordings originally released with the name British Symphony Orchestra on the label. The list also includes other recordings which fall outside this strict definition: either because they have been included in discographies of specific conductors ; or were never publicly released for general sale; or have been re-released as such on CD; or for comparison purposes only.
The conductor Bernard Haitink recorded works, especially symphonies and other orchestral works, with different orchestras. He made recordings for several labels, including Philips Records, EMI Classics, Columbia Records, LSO Live, RCO Live, and CSO Resound.