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.BBC Genome, January 27, 1928, 5XX Daventry, 20.00: National Concert 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.Martin Graebe, “Gustav Holst, Songs of the West, and the English Folk Song Movement” in Folk Music Journal , volume 11, number 1, pages 5–41
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.BBC Genome, November 23, 1928, 2LO London and 5XX Daventry, 20.00: B.B.C. Symphony Concert, Part I: The Pilgrim's Progress: First appearance of the newly reconstituted National Chorus 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.BBC Genome, August 30, 1928, 2LO London, 19.00: The National Chorus: the new organization and its first season's workThe Radio Times synopsis of the 1928 broadcast on the National Chorus, the new organisation and its first season's work reads as follows: READERS of The Radio Times will remember announcements of the new National Chorus, which is destined to provide a permanent, amateur chorus, the members of which will be at the same time members of the existing amateur choral societies, to perform in important works on a big scale. For some time it had been the custom to get together a chorus formed of parties drawn from some of the big London choral societies, who sang with the professional Wireless Chorus; but it was felt that the time had come to establish a permanent amateur chorus that could be called upon for the performance of the most important choral works. Ever since the announcement was made the work of giving auditions has been going on, although the actual selection will not begin until the last audition is over. In this evening's talk the full significance of this development, momentous in the history both of broadcasting and of choral singing – for permanent choirs of two hundred and fifty are not formed every day – will be explained, and the first season's work of the new organization will be outlined.Letters from a Life: Selected Letters and Diaries of Benjamin Britten: Volume One 1923–39, ed. Donald Mitchell and Philip Reed. Faber, 1991: p. 169. Chorus Masters of the BBC Symphony ChorusThe BBC Symphony Orchestra 1930–1980, Nicholas Kenyon, BBC, 1981, pp. 513–517: Appendix F: The BBC Symphony Chorus 1928–80 1.Stanford Robinson1928–19322.Cyril Dalmaine1932–19333.Leslie Woodgate1934–19614.Peter Gellhorn1961–19725.John Poole1968–1976Responsibility for the BBC Choral Society was devolved to John Poole in 1968, but Peter Gellhorn carried on as official chorus director until 1972.6.Brian Wright1976–19847.Gareth Morrell1984–19888.Stephen Jackson1989–20159.Neil Ferris2017–
Its earliest concerts included the UK premiere of Mahler's Eighth Symphony (15 April 1930, under Sir Henry Wood), Beethoven's Missa Solemnis (17 December 1930), the London premiere of Walton's Belshazzar's Feast (25 November 1931, under Adrian Boult) and Stravinsky's Symphony of Psalms (27 January 1932, under Ernest Ansermet). 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.Pass the Baton! Celebrating the BBC Orchestras and Choirs: BBC Symphony Orchestra, BBC Radio 3, November 27, 2016, 6.30 p.m., including a talk by Sir Andrew Davis on his time with the BBC Symphony Chorus 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.Naxos Records, Profile of the BBC Symphony Chorus
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 (as he put it) 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 (which had been premiered in Leeds Town Hall in 1925), 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. JSTOR archive. 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 (the "Choral") on 3 November 1937 with the BBC Choral Society. The Verdi Requiem on 27 May 1938 and Beethoven's Mass in D, Op. 123 (the Missa Solemnis) 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 (when that became intolerable because of air-raids) 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.William Everitt, Hon. Secretary of the BBC Choral Society, 21st anniversary souvenir booklet, BBC Choral Society 1928-1949: a souvenir to celebrate the coming of age of the Society, BBC, 1949
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.BBC Genome, November 7, 1945, BBC Home Service Basic, 19.45: National Concert 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 (the former principal viola of the BBC Symphony Orchestra) 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 (with a concert of English music by Thomas Arne, Handel and Hubert Parry) and a memorial concert for King George VI (Messiah with the Royal Choral Society).