BBC Symphony Chorus
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.
Brief history
Background
In its early years, the BBC worked on developing its choral output, founding the BBC Wireless Chorus, a professional chamber choir of 16, to supply the smaller scale needs. For bigger choral works, the BBC turned to outside organisations, which performed either under their own name, or under the title of "The National Chorus". Participating choruses included the Civil Service Choir, the Lloyds Choir, and the Railway Clearing House Male Voice Choir, which would perform en masse together with the Wireless Chorus. Holst's choral ballet The Morning of the Year has the distinction of having been the first piece of music to be commissioned by the music department of the newly formed British Broadcasting Corporation. Its first performance was as part of a concert given at the Royal Albert Hall by the National Chorus and Orchestra, which was broadcast live, on the evening of 17 March 1927.Foundation
By 1928, the BBC had decided there was a need to develop a large amateur chorus of its own. Notices advertising the formation of The National Chorus were placed, auditions were held, a broadcast was delivered in August 1928 discussing the new choir and its upcoming programme, and the choir gave its first performance later that year in Granville Bantock's oratorio The Pilgrim's Progress. Stanford Robinson, already on the BBC's staff, was appointed Conductor. A condition of singing in the new choir was that the new member must already be a member of an existing choir.Its earliest concerts included the UK premiere of Mahler's Eighth Symphony, Beethoven's Missa Solemnis, the London premiere of Walton's Belshazzar's Feast and Stravinsky's Symphony of Psalms. The Missa Solemnis under the baton of Herman Scherchen on 17 December 1930 was the first performance of the Chorus with the new BBC Symphony Orchestra. Outstanding events in the following years included the premiere of Morning Heroes by Bliss, on 25 March 1931; and the British premiere of Hindemith’s oratorio Das Unaufhörliche, which Wood conducted on 22 March 1933. Also noted are performances under such conductors as Adrian Boult, Arturo Toscanini and Bruno Walter.
In 1932, Stanford Robinson was transferred to the BBC Theatre Orchestra, which he conducted for many years. He was succeeded briefly by Cyril Dalmaine, who took over in July 1932. In his autobiography, written under the pseudonym Jonah Barrington, Dalmaine said his appointment 'typifies one of the early weaknesses in BBC administration – the allocating of jobs to the lowest bidder'. It was plain that Dalmaine was not ideally suited to the job, and within two years he left the BBC, a victim of 'the BBC’s absorbed and all-pervading interest in man’s relations with woman' which was ‘at that time proverbial’.
Leslie Woodgate
The choir's name was changed in 1932 to The BBC Chorus, and again in 1935 to become the BBC Choral Society when a professional choir named the BBC Chorus was established. Leslie Woodgate held the post of chorus master from 1934 until he died in 1961. He was wholly dedicated to the work of preparing the Society for the many arduous engagements it undertook, and raised the choir from the position of being, as Sir Henry Coward told Woodgate in 1936, 'nearly as good as my Yorkshire choir' to being at least as good as the great, long-established choral societies of the north. Important performances of new works continued: on 11 April 1934 there was Holst's First Choral Symphony, and on 28 November 1934 the British premiere of Stravinsky's Perséphone. In January 1935 Albert Coates conducted one of the Thirties’ curiosities: the Symphony in C minor by Yuri Shaporin. The BBC Choral Society took part in Bartók's Cantata Profana on 25 March 1936 under Boult; the London premiere of Vaughan Williams's Five Tudor Portraits on 27 January 1937; and, perhaps most remarkable of all, the British premiere of Busoni's Doktor Faust, which took place on 17 March 1937.In 1939, Leslie Woodgate described the operation and function of the various BBC choirs, including the Choral Society, in an interview with The Musical Times. Under Leslie Woodgate, the Choral Society achieved maturity; and all accounts of the period agree that the occasions which marked that maturity were the concerts given at the end of the 1930s under the direction of Arturo Toscanini. When Toscanini was first persuaded to come to England, he would not consider working with an amateur chorus, but eventually he accepted the challenge of a performance of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, Op. 125 on 3 November 1937 with the BBC Choral Society. The Verdi Requiem on 27 May 1938 and Beethoven's Mass in D, Op. 123 on 26 May 1939 were both performed under his direction in the following two years, in a series of concerts in the BBC's London Music Festival, which were the highlights of the capital's musical life in the pre-war years.
Second World War
The Second World War interrupted the activities of the BBC Choral Society as it did many other artistic ventures. The outbreak of war saw the evacuation of the BBC Symphony Orchestra to Bristol, and then to Bedford. This led to the abandonment of the activities of the Society.In August 1942, in war-time London, an entirely fortuitous meeting near the Albert Memorial took place between the Chorus Master Leslie Woodgate and Honorary Secretary, and the restarting of the Society was discussed. Dr R. S. Thatcher, the Assistant Director of Music at the BBC, became interested, and a meeting was called in December 1942, at which it was agreed that the chorus should not remain inactive, but that it should resume rehearsals. On the first Friday of January 1943, about one hundred members assembled for the first of the war-time rehearsals.
These Friday rehearsals were an ideal tonic for the members, and undoubtedly helped them very much in carrying on their arduous war-time labours. To Leslie Woodgate, already overburdened with work, they must have seemed almost the last straw, as he frequently had to travel long distances in order to conduct them. The members, indeed, owe him a debt of gratitude for his efforts during those trying times.
Then came the flying bombs. Rehearsals stopped, but after about six weeks it was decided to resume. During that period four of the members lost their lives.
Postwar
After the war, activities began again in earnest. Yuri Shaporin's On the Field of Kulikovo was another of the Russian works undertaken by the chorus in this period, on 7 November 1945, conducted by Albert Coates. To mark the 21st birthday of the BBC Choral Society in 1949, several special events took place, among them the first performance in London of a work by Leslie Woodgate, his oratorio Simon Peter. The following year, Adrian Boult, who had conducted many of the performances in the 1930s and 1940s as the BBC's Director of Music and Chief Conductor, reached retiring age and was not asked to remain with the corporation. In 1950 the post of Chief Conductor of the BBC Symphony Orchestra was given to Malcolm Sargent, and there began an era in which the performance of the great choral works became a particular feature of BBC concerts.Sargent was especially devoted to choral music. His special skills with singers were well described by Bernard Shore in his book The Orchestra Speaks: 'He is able to instil into the singers a life and efficiency they never dreamed of. You have only to see the eyes of a choral society screwing into him like hundreds of gimlets, to understand what he means to them. He is hypnotic with the choir – he plays upon the imagination and minds of the singers like a mesmerist.' Under Sargent the emphasis in the Society's repertoire shifted from adventurous new continental works to the 20th-century compositions of British composers: Herbert Howells's Hymnus Paradisi, Vaughan Williams's Sea Symphony, Delius's Sea Drift, Ireland's These things shall be, along with the classics of the choral repertory such as Haydn's Creation, Beethoven's Ninth and the Missa Solemnis, Handel's Messiah. Premieres were fewer than before: significant works included Golgotha by Frank Martin and Hodie by Vaughan Williams. Important events included the ceremonial opening of the new Royal Festival Hall in 1951 and a memorial concert for King George VI.
While Leslie Woodgate continued to be Chorus Master of the BBC Choral Society, Sargent was succeeded as Chief Conductor of the BBC Symphony Orchestra by Rudolf Schwarz. This took place in 1957; Sargent continued to conduct the Society on many occasions, but a change in direction was immediately apparent with the inclusion in programmes of such new works as The Bermudas by lain Hamilton and such rare works as Monteverdi's Vespers of 1610 . Schwarz also conducted Ulysses by Matyas Seiber for two concerts in December 1957. In 1958 the BBC Choral Society under Leslie Woodgate travelled to Aachen, where they gave an a cappella concert including Britten's Hymn to St Cecilia, and then went on to the Herkulesaal in Munich, where Handel's Messiah was performed.
1960s
The arrival of William Glock at the BBC as Controller, Music, in 1959, had the same revolutionary effect on the BBC Choral Society as on every other department concerned with music. In addition, the Society suffered a sudden loss in 1961 with the death of Leslie Woodgate, who had guided it through 27 years of its existence. On 15 June 1961, a memorial concert was held, directed by Keith Falkner and by George Thalben-Ball. Peter Gellhorn took over the post of Chorus Master, which he held for some eleven years until 1972. Under the Glock regime new works began to re-assume a vital part in the Society's repertoire. On 1 August 1963 the London premiere of Britten's War Requiem was given, with Britten and Meredith Davies conducting. Later that year Alan Rawsthorne's Carmen Vitale was a choral commission; and at the beginning of 1963 the Society faced one of its greatest challenges, a new work by Hans Werner Henze called Novae de Infinito Laudes. This was given two performances under the composer's direction: on 17 March 1965, and again at the Proms on 27 August. Distinguished visitors in this period included Leopold Stokowski. A return visit by Ernest Ansermet to conduct Honegger's King David had been planned to mark the 10th anniversary of Honegger's death, but Ansermet was ill and Sir Adrian Boult took over at short notice.In what he described as 'an act of faith', Glock promoted in 1967 the first performance in England of the St Luke Passion by the Polish composer Krzysztof Penderecki – a modern re-working of the traditional large-scale Passion setting which made exceptional demands on the choir. The occasion was a great success, and was repeated in the Proms on 2 August 1967. A typical example of the extraordinary demands made on the chorus during the Proms each year was the succession of works performed during that season: in addition to the Penderecki, Mahler's Second Symphony, Walton's Belshazzar's Feast, Liszt's Faust Symphony, Berlioz's Grande Messe des Morts, Delius's Appalachia, Vaughan Williams's Serenade to Music, Schubert's E flat Mass and Beethoven's Ninth were all sung.
Under Antal Dorati, Chief Conductor of the BBC Symphony Orchestra from 1963 to 1967, the BBC Choral Society sang Mahler, a great deal of Stravinsky, some Britten, and much Beethoven. When Colin Davis took over in 1967, a new group of composers came to the fore: Berlioz, Liszt, and Michael Tippett. This last connection brought the BBC Choral Society its opportunity to make its first recording for a commercial company in recent years : Tippett's oratorio A Child of Our Time was recorded under Davis's direction for Philips Classics Records. There followed a succession of major contemporary works: Voices of Night by Franz Reizenstein in 1969; La Transfiguration de Notre Seigneur Jésus-Christ by Messiaen at the first night of the Proms in 1970; and the Requiem by Gyorgy Ligeti in 1971.