Malcolm Sargent

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.
As chief conductor of London's internationally famous summer music festival the Henry Wood Promenade Concerts from 1947 to 1967, Sargent was one of the best-known English conductors. When he took over the Proms, he and two assistants conducted the two-month season between them. By the time he died, he was assisted by a large international roster of guest conductors.
At the outbreak of the Second World War, Sargent turned down an offer of a musical directorship in Australia and returned to Britain to bring music to as many people as possible as his contribution to national morale. His fame extended beyond the concert hall: to the British public, he was a familiar broadcaster in BBC radio discussion programmes, and generations of Gilbert and Sullivan devotees have known his recordings of the most popular Savoy Operas. He toured widely throughout the world and was noted for his skill as a conductor, his championship of British composers, and his debonair appearance, which won him the nickname "Flash Harry".

Life and career

Sargent's parents lived in Stamford, Lincolnshire, but he was born in Ashford, in Kent while his mother was staying with a family friend. He was the elder child and only son of Henry Edward Sargent and his wife Agnes, née Hall. Henry Sargent was chief clerk at a Stamford coal merchant, an amateur musician and local church organist; before their marriage his wife had been the matron of the Stamford High School for Girls. The young Sargent won a scholarship to Stamford School, where he was a pupil from 1907 to 1912. At the same time he was preparing for the musical career his father envisaged for him. He studied piano and organ, and joined the local amateur operatic society, making his stage debut in The Mikado aged 13 and conducting for the first time the following year when the regular conductor was unavailable. On leaving school, Sargent was articled to Haydn Keeton, organist of Peterborough Cathedral, and was one of the last musicians to be trained in that traditional way. At the age of 16 he gained his diploma as Associate of the Royal College of Organists, and at 18 he was awarded the degree of Bachelor of Music by the University of Durham.

Early career

Sargent worked first as an organist at St Mary's Church, Melton Mowbray, Leicestershire, from 1914 to 1924, except for eight months in 1918 when he served as a private in the Durham Light Infantry during the First World War. He was chosen for the organist post over more than 150 other applicants. In addition to his organ playing he worked on many musical projects in Leicester, Melton Mowbray and Stamford, where he not only conducted but also produced the operas of Gilbert and Sullivan and others for amateur societies. The Prince of Wales and his entourage often hunted in Leicestershire and watched the annual Gilbert and Sullivan productions there, together with the Duke of York and other members of the Royal Family. At the age of 24 Sargent became England's youngest Doctor of Music, with a degree from Durham.
Sargent's break came when Sir Henry Wood visited the De Montfort Hall, Leicester, early in 1921 with the Queen's Hall orchestra. As it was his custom to commission a piece from a local composer, Wood invited Sargent to write a piece. Sargent did so – a tone poem, An Impression on a Windy Day, a seven-minute orchestral allegro impetuoso. He completed it too late for Wood to have enough time to learn it, and Wood called on him to conduct the first performance. Wood recognised not only the worth of the piece but also Sargent's talent as a conductor and gave him the chance to make his London debut, conducting the work at the Proms – the annual season of the Henry Wood Promenade Concerts – in the Queen's Hall on 11 October of the same year.
Sargent as composer attracted favourable notice in a Prom season when other composer-conductors included Gustav Holst with his Planets suite, and the next year Wood included Sargent's "Nocturne and Scherzo" in the Proms programme, also conducted by the composer. Sargent was invited to conduct his Impression again in the 1923 season, but it was as a conductor that he made the greater impact. On the advice of Wood, among others, he soon abandoned composition in favour of conducting. He founded the amateur Leicester Symphony Orchestra in 1922, which he continued to conduct until 1939. Under Sargent, the orchestra's prestige grew until it was able to obtain such top-flight soloists as Alfred Cortot, Artur Schnabel, Solomon, Guilhermina Suggia and Benno Moiseiwitsch. Moiseiwitsch gave Sargent piano lessons without charge, judging him talented enough to make a successful career as a concert pianist, but Sargent chose a conducting career. At the instigation of Wood and Adrian Boult he became a lecturer at the Royal College of Music in London in 1923.

National fame

In the 1920s Sargent became one of the best-known English conductors. In London, he succeeded Boult as conductor of the Robert Mayer Concerts for Children from 1924 to 1939. In the provinces he conducted the British National Opera Company in The Mastersingers on tour in 1924 and 1925, winning praise from music critics around the country. In 1925 he conducted his first broadcast performance for the BBC: more than two thousand more followed over the next four decades.
In 1926 Sargent began an association with the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company that lasted, on and off, for the rest of his life. He conducted London seasons at the Prince's Theatre in 1926 and the newly rebuilt Savoy Theatre in 1929–30. He was criticised by The Times for allegedly adding "gags" to the Gilbert and Sullivan scores, although the writer praised the crispness of the ensemble, the "musicalness" of the performance and the beauty of the overture. Rupert D'Oyly Carte wrote to the paper stating that Sargent had worked from Arthur Sullivan's manuscript scores and had merely brought out the "details of the orchestration" exactly as Sullivan had written them. Some of the principal cast members objected to Sargent's fast tempi, at least at first. The D'Oyly Carte seasons brought Sargent's name to a wider public with an early BBC radio relay of The Mikado in 1926 heard by up to eight million people. The Evening Standard commented that this was "probably the largest audience that has ever heard anything at one time in the history of the world".
In 1927 Sergei Diaghilev engaged Sargent to conduct for the Ballets Russes, sharing the conducting with Igor Stravinsky and Sir Thomas Beecham. In 1928 Sargent was appointed conductor of the Royal Choral Society; he retained this post for four decades until his death. The society was famous in the 1920s and 1930s for staged performances of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor's Hiawatha at the Royal Albert Hall, a work with which Sargent's name soon became synonymous.
Elizabeth Courtauld, wife of the industrialist and art collector Samuel Courtauld, promoted a popular series of subscription concerts beginning in 1929 and on Schnabel's advice engaged Sargent as chief conductor, with guest conductors including Bruno Walter, Otto Klemperer and Stravinsky. The Courtauld-Sargent concerts, as they became known, were aimed at people who had not previously attended concerts. They attracted large audiences, bringing Sargent's name before another section of the public. In addition to the core repertory, Sargent introduced new works by Bliss, Honegger, Kodály, Martinů, Prokofiev, Szymanowski and Walton, among others. At first, the London Symphony Orchestra was engaged for these concerts, but the orchestra, a self-governing co-operative, refused to replace key players whom Sargent considered sub-standard. As a result, in conjunction with Beecham, Sargent set about establishing a new orchestra, the London Philharmonic.
In these years Sargent tackled a wide repertoire, recording much of it, but he was particularly noted for performances of choral pieces, most notably Handel's Messiah, performed with large choruses and orchestras. He joked that his career was based on "the two M's – Messiah and Mikado". He promoted British music, as he would throughout his career, and conducted the premieres of At the Boar's Head by Holst; Hugh the Drover ; Sir John in Love by Vaughan Williams; and Walton's cantata Belshazzar's Feast. The chorus for the last of these found Walton's music difficult, but Sargent engaged them with it, telling them they were helping to make musical history, and reminding them that Berlioz's Requiem and Elgar's The Dream of Gerontius had been considered impossible at first. He drew from them and the LSO what The Times described as "a performance of unflagging energy and amazing volume of tone under Dr. Malcolm Sargent".

Difficult years and war years

In October 1932 Sargent suffered a near-fatal attack of tuberculosis. For almost two years he was unable to work, and it was only later in the 1930s that he returned to the concert scene. In 1936 he conducted his first opera at Covent Garden, Gustave Charpentier's Louise. He did not conduct opera there again until 1954, with Walton's Troilus and Cressida, although he did conduct the incidental music for a dramatisation of The Pilgrim's Progress given at the Royal Opera House in 1948.
Although Sargent was popular with choral singers, his relations with orchestras were sometimes strained. After giving a Daily Telegraph interview in 1936 in which he said that an orchestral musician did not deserve a "job for life" and should "give of his lifeblood with every bar he plays," Sargent lost much favour with orchestral musicians. They were particularly aggrieved because of their support of him during his long illness, and thereafter he faced frequent hostility from British orchestras.
Being popular in Australia with players as well as the public, Sargent made three lengthy tours of Australia and New Zealand, beginning in 1936. He was on the point of accepting a permanent appointment with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation when, at the outbreak of the Second World War, he felt it his duty to return to his country, resisting strong pressure from the Australian media for him to stay. During the war, Sargent directed the Hallé Orchestra in Manchester and the Liverpool Philharmonic and became a popular BBC Home Service radio broadcaster, particularly in the discussion programme The Brains Trust. He helped boost public morale during the war by extensive concert tours around the country conducting for nominal fees. On one occasion, an air raid interrupted a performance of Beethoven's Symphony No. 7. Sargent stopped the orchestra, reassured the audience that they were safer inside the hall than fleeing outside, and resumed conducting. He later said that no orchestra had ever played so well and that no audience in his experience had ever listened so intently. In May 1941 he conducted the last performance heard in the Queen's Hall. Following an afternoon concert comprising the Enigma Variations and The Dream of Gerontius – praised by The Times as "performances of real distinction" – the hall was destroyed during an overnight incendiary raid.
In 1945 Arturo Toscanini invited Sargent to conduct the NBC Symphony Orchestra. In four concerts Sargent chose to present all English music, with the exception of Sibelius's Symphony No. 1 and Dvořák's Symphony No. 7. Two concertos, Walton's Viola Concerto with William Primrose, and Elgar's Violin Concerto with Yehudi Menuhin, were programmed as part of these concerts. Menuhin judged Sargent's conducting of the latter "the next best to Elgar in this work".