So, now you know what makes up an orchestra in instrumental terms, let’s turn our attention to some of the finest orchestral institutions around the UK. In no way is this intended to be a complete list of all of the orchestras that perform week in and week out around the country. Instead, we’ve concentrated on the ones that you’re most likely to hear being played on Classic FM, and that includes a very good cross section of the nation’s great symphony and chamber orchestras.
When the conductor Christopher Hogwood founded the Academy of Ancient Music back in 1973, he wanted to perform music from the Baroque and Classical periods in exactly the way that the composers had originally intended it to be heard. That meant that the instruments themselves needed to be authentic, so out went steel strings and in came strings made of animal gut; valves on trumpets and chin rests on violins and violas were jettisoned; and the cellists had to forgo spikes to rest their instruments on the floor, squeezing them between their legs instead. The sound was very different from that of a modern orchestra and it excited audiences and critics alike. The Independent described the Academy of Ancient Music as ‘the ultimate raspberry to anyone who says Baroque music is predictable’. In 2006, Richard Egarr took over as Music Director and the orchestra continues to flourish – it now has more than 300 recordings to its name.
Founded by the violinist Neville Marriner in 1958, the Academy of St Martin in the Fields performs in a church of the same name just off Trafalgar Square in London. It is among the most recorded of all British orchestras, with more than 500 discs under its belt and it had a particularly busy period in the recording studio with the advent of the compact disc in the 1980s. Initially, it was formed by the musicians on a collegiate basis, without a conductor. But a couple of years after its launch, Marriner (now Sir Neville) laid down his violin and took up the conductor’s baton. The orchestra varies in size from chamber to symphonic strength.
Despite only being a decade old, the Aurora Orchestra has cut an impressive swathe through the classical music world, quickly establishing itself as a chamber orchestra to be reckoned with. Its Artistic Director Nicholas Collon is also making something of a name for himself, with a burgeoning career conducting many other major orchestras. It’s no mean feat to establish a brand-new orchestra in London – and to get the classical music establishment and audiences to take notice of what you are doing in the concert hall. Aurora has managed to do this in style, making its home at the recently built Kings Place Concert Hall just around the corner from King’s Cross station and also at LSO St Luke’s, an innovative education, rehearsal, recording and small concert venue in a converted Grade-I-listed Hawksmoor church, near the Barbican Centre in the City of London. As well as being comfortable performing seasons of Bach and Mozart, the orchestra has built a reputation for developing cutting-edge creative partnerships with other art forms, including dance, film and theatre. Definitely one to listen out for in the future.
Launched in 1992, the Britten Sinfonia might not be the oldest orchestra in this book – but it has certainly made an indelible mark for the better on the country’s chamber music life. Unusually, it does not have a permanent principal conductor or music director. Instead, this role is taken by a series of different guest artists with whom the orchestra collaborates, often performing without anyone taking the traditional conducting role at all. The Britten Sinfonia’s work is centred in the East of England, where it has residencies in Cambridge and Norwich, but its performances are by no means limited to these regions, with regular concerts in Brighton, at the Barbican Centre in London and also across the European mainland. The orchestra has diversified to include the choral group Britten Sinfonia Voices and the Britten Sinfonia Academy, which trains school-age musicians at weekends.
Bournemouth’s celebrated orchestra is not actually based in Bournemouth. Its home in fact is just down the road in Poole. It started life in the 1890s, when Sir Dan Godfrey was appointed to form a new municipal orchestra, drawing players from the Italian military band that for many years had given concerts in the town. Because of this, the orchestra still played in military uniform for the first few years of its life. It was called the Bournemouth Municipal Orchestra until 1954, when it was given its current name.
The BSO has a long pedigree of championing English music; when it celebrated its 25th anniversary, the likes of Sir Edward Elgar sent letters of congratulation to mark its achievements in this area. Today, the BSO is Classic FM’s Orchestra in the South of England, performing more than 130 concerts a year in venues including Basingstoke, Bournemouth, Bristol, Exeter, Poole, Portsmouth, Southampton, Weymouth and Winchester. It was notable in being the first British orchestra to appoint a female principal conductor – Marin Alsop, who directed the orchestra from 2002 to 2008. The dynamic young Ukrainian Kirill Karabits took up the baton at the beginning of the 2009 season.
The Birmingham Symphony Orchestra was founded in 1920 and renamed the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra twenty-eight years later. There is a long tradition of classical music in the city, with a regular music festival dating back as far as 1768. The current Music Director is Andris Nelsons but it was the then twenty-five-year-old Simon Rattle who made his name with the orchestra when he took charge in 1980. Under his leadership, the CBSO developed a strong reputation both at home and abroad and recorded extensively. In 1991, the city benefited from the opening of a brand-new purpose-built concert venue in the heart of Birmingham. Symphony Hall remains one of the finest places anywhere to listen to classical music, with world-class acoustics. It is run by the same team that operates Birmingham’s Town Hall as a smaller classical music venue just down the road.
The City of London Sinfonia was founded by the conductor Richard Hickox in 1971. He remained its Music Director until his death in 2008. The orchestra is particularly committed to the performance of the music of twentieth century and contemporary British composers; it has made more than 130 recordings of their music.
Although the City of London Sinfonia has toured as far afield as Australia, Brazil, China, Colombia, Dubai and Norway, it has specialised in taking world-class live classical music to English locations that might not otherwise experience it at all, including Chatham, High Wycombe, Ipswich and King’s Lynn. It is not to be confused with either the Sinfonia of London, a studio orchestra founded by the Rank Organisation in 1955, or the London Sinfonietta, a completely separate contemporary music orchestra.
Founded in Manchester in 1858 by the respected pianist and conductor Charles Hallé, the Hallé Orchestra is the UK’s second oldest continuously operating professional symphony orchestra, beaten to the title of being the oldest only by its near neighbour the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, which can trace its origin as a professional band back to 1853. The Hallé’s home venue is the wonderful Bridgewater Hall in the centre of Manchester and the orchestra has a long association with the cities of Bradford and Sheffield. The orchestra is currently enjoying a sustained artistic resurgence under Music Director Sir Mark Elder. He follows in a long line of prestigious principal conductors, including Sir Thomas Beecham, Sir Hamilton Harty, Hans Richter and Sir John Barbirolli. The orchestra’s list of world-premiere performances includes Elgar’s Symphony No. 1, Vaughan Williams’ Sinfonia Antartica and Finzi’s Cello Concerto.
The London Mozart Players have become famous for doing one thing and doing it very well – namely, playing the music of Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert and their contemporaries. The orchestra was founded in 1949 by the violinist Harry Blech, who set out to take the finest conductors, soloists and players to regional concert halls and small-scale venues in out-of-the-way places right around the country. The music directors who followed on from Blech – Jane Glover, Matthias Bamert, Andrew Parrott and Gérard Korsten – have each continued in this tradition. They have also maintained the purity of the London Mozart Players’ central philosophy of performing music only from the Classical period. In a crowded market of London orchestras this has given the London Mozart Players a very clear point of difference.
Sir Thomas Beecham founded the London Philharmonic Orchestra in 1932, with his new ensemble giving its first concert at the Queen’s Hall in London that same year. Just seven years later, with the outbreak of the Second World War, it ran into financial difficulties and was saved from bankruptcy only by its players, who took over its running. The LPO’s notable international achievements include being the first British orchestra to appear in Soviet Russia (in 1956) and being the first Western orchestra to visit China (in 1973). The orchestra is resident at the Royal Festival Hall in London and also spends the summer as the resident orchestra at Glyndebourne Festival Opera deep in the Sussex countryside – a role it has undertaken since 1964.
The LPO is also particularly successful in the cinema, with its soundtrack recordings including The Lord of the Rings trilogy, Lawrence of Arabia and The Mission. After Beecham, its principal conductors have included Sir Adrian Boult, Sir Bernard Haitink, Sir Georg Solti, Klaus Tennstedt, Kurt Masur and the present incumbent Vladimir Jurowski – one of a new generation of young conductors who are galvanising the British orchestral scene.
Co-founded by impresario Nicholas Snowman and conductor David Atherton in 1968, this chamber orchestra has focused on modern classical music throughout its life, with many of its performances including world premieres of key works by living composers The orchestra has never been afraid to push the boundaries of how a classical music concert should look and sound, on occasions blending in electronic music and working with folk and jazz musicians. Other major collaborations have included pieces involving choreographed dance and specially shot film. In 1969, the orchestra gave the premiere performance of John Tavener’s The Whale, recording the work for the Beatles’ Apple Records label the following year. Tavener ended up on the label after his brother had worked as a builder on Ringo Starr’s house. Today, the London Sinfonietta is resident at London’s Southbank Centre and is based at Kings Place. It has enjoyed a particularly close relationship with the composer and conductor Oliver Knussen.
Widely acknowledged as being among the greatest orchestras in the world, the LSO is a self-governing ensemble, which came into being in 1904 after a group of players fell out with the conductor Sir Henry Wood and resigned en masse from his Queen’s Hall Orchestra. The new orchestra was owned and governed by the players, along the lines of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, which had come into existence around twenty years earlier.
The LSO’s first conductor was the legendary Hans Richter. In the years since, the orchestra has been conducted by a Who’s Who of top baton-wavers including Richard Strauss, Sir Thomas Beecham, Leopold Stokowski, Sir John Barbirolli, Benjamin Britten, Leonard Bernstein, André Previn, Claudio Abbado, Sir Colin Davis, Michael Tilson Thomas and Valery Gergiev.
The orchestra has mounted extensive international tours ever since it became the first British orchestra to tour abroad, to Paris, in 1906. Six years later, the LSO was the first British orchestra to visit the USA, narrowly avoiding travelling on the Titanic. In 1956, it was the first British orchestra to visit South Africa and, in 1963, it was the first to visit Japan. The LSO’s first world tour was in 1964, taking in Israel, Turkey, Iran, India, Hong Kong, Korea, Japan and the US.
For many people, the LSO has become synonymous with film soundtracks – it has provided the musical accompaniment to all of the Star Wars movies. In the late 1970s, the orchestra gained a significant financial boost from its series of Classic Rock recordings, which proved to be an enormous commercial success. In the strictly classical world, the LSO’s recording of Elgar’s Cello Concerto, with Jacqueline du Pré as soloist and Sir John Barbirolli as conductor, is regarded by many as being the greatest version of the work ever committed to disc.
Today, the LSO is Classic FM’s orchestra in the City of London, resident at the Barbican Centre and at St Luke’s.
Another leading chamber orchestra, Manchester Camerata, reaches audiences of 70,000 people every year with residencies at the Bridgewater Hall and the Royal Northern College of Music in its home city, as well as regular appearances in towns and cities as varied as Blackburn, Bolton, Bridlington, Chester, Colne, Hanley, Hull, Kendal, Lancaster, Leeds, Malvern, Sheffield, Stafford and Ulverston. Its Artistic Director is the Hungarian Gábor Takács-Nagy.
A jewel in the UK’s music education crown, the National Children’s Orchestra brings together the most promising young musicians aged between seven and thirteen from right across the country to perform together as a symphony orchestra. It was founded in 1978 by Vivienne Price MBE because she wanted to create an ensemble that enabled children who were younger than the normal youth-orchestra age group to perform together. It proved so successful that the National Children’s Orchestra set up a training orchestra to operate alongside the main ensemble to help provide an even earlier taste of orchestral life for young musicians. The organisation’s track record for spotting talent is pretty impressive, with the cellist Guy Johnston, the violinist Nicola Benedetti and the conductors Robin Ticciati and Daniel Harding all former members of the National Children’s Orchestra – not to mention a legion of musicians now playing professionally in many of Britain’s leading orchestras. Many of the youngsters who play in the National Children’s Orchestra graduate on to the National Youth Orchestra once they become old enough.
Founded in 1948, the National Youth Orchestra set out to prove that British teenagers could form a top-quality symphony orchestra that performed core classical repertoire with proficiency and flair that belied the age of the performers. Today, the National Youth Orchestra is the foremost training ground for the musicians who go on to make their careers in professional British orchestras. The statistics speak for themselves: one-fifth of the London Symphony Orchestra’s ninety players are NYO graduates; there are thirteen former NYO players in the Philharmonia Orchestra; and the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House and the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra have among their ranks twelve and nine NYO alumni respectively.
The orchestra draws its players, who are all teenagers, from all corners of the British Isles, for three intensive residential sessions each year. At the end of each period, during which the players receive coaching from top professional musicians, the orchestra performs in concert, often under the baton of Principal Conductor Vasily Petrenko. In 2013, the National Youth Orchestra was awarded the Queen’s Medal for Music for its significant contribution to the country’s musical life. It remains one of the most important organisations for ensuring that the future of classical music in the UK continues to shine brightly. The Guardian has described the orchestra as ‘a credit to Britain’.
One of the more prosaically named ensembles in this book, the OAE is different from nearly all the other orchestras we feature because it tends not to play by the same set of rules as everyone else. Now, don’t misunderstand us, because artistically the OAE is absolutely top notch, but it likes to be a little different. So, there’s no single principal conductor running things, while the players perform on period instruments without any of the snazzy modern technological advances that would make, say, a twenty-first-century clarinet unfamiliar to a composer such as Mozart. Conductors Sir Mark Elder, Ivan Fischer, Sir Simon Rattle and Vladimir Jurowski are regular fixtures on the podium each season and the orchestra has carved out a new niche for itself with its ‘Night Shift’ performances that place classical music in non-traditional late-night settings, with the aim of taking the genre to a group of listeners who would otherwise quite probably never encounter classical music in a live setting at all. By the way, the ‘Age of Enlightenment’ was a cultural movement of European intellectuals from around the turn of the eighteenth century; they placed great emphasis on ‘reason’ and ‘individualism’, rather than on ‘tradition’. They set great store by using science to question ideas that had previously been seen as unchallengeable – so it’s easy to see from where the musicians behind the OAE have drawn their inspiration.
The Philharmonia Orchestra’s fine reputation is all the more impressive given its relative youth. It was the brainchild of impresario and record company executive Walter Legge, who came up with the plan to establish a new virtuoso orchestra towards the end of the Second World War. It made its debut on 27 October 1945, in London’s Kingsway Hall, with Sir Thomas Beecham conducting.
The connection between Beecham and the orchestra did not last for long – he disagreed with Legge over how it should be run and decided to form his own Royal Philharmonic – but other leading figures flocked to conduct it. Within a few years, the orchestra, which Legge had formed primarily to record for the record label EMI, was being conducted by no less a personage than Richard Strauss. It went on to give the world premiere of his Four Last Songs for soprano and orchestra in 1950. During that decade, the orchestra blossomed further, taking part in the historic opening concert of London’s Royal Festival Hall in 1951 and touring Europe and the US in 1952 and 1954 respectively with Herbert von Karajan.
In 1964, Legge decided to disband the orchestra. It refused to die, instead re-emerging as the self-governing New Philharmonia Orchestra. The legendary conductor Otto Klemperer, whom Legge had appointed Principal Conductor of the Philharmonia in 1959, decided to stick by the players, as did other great conductors, notably Carlo Maria Giulini. Klemperer remained closely associated with the orchestra until his retirement in 1971. The new name stuck until 1977, when it was changed back to the Philharmonia Orchestra.
During the 1970s and 1980s, an amazing variety of conducting talents stepped onto the Philharmonia’s podium: Bernard Haitink, Lorin Maazel, Vladimir Ashkenazy, Riccardo Muti and Simon Rattle were among their number. Plácido Domingo even chose to launch his conducting career with the orchestra when he took it to Spain in 1988. The current Principal Conductor and Artistic Adviser is the Finnish conductor and composer Esa-Pekka Salonen. Today, the orchestra is known both for the extent of its touring with world-class soloists around much of the UK (hence its title ‘Classic FM’s Orchestra on Tour’), as well as for its highly innovative work in the digital area, with the aim of building new audiences for classical music as a whole.
Founded by Michael Hall in 1958, this chamber orchestra was originally known as the ‘Sinfonia Orchestra’. A year later, ‘Northern’ was added to the front of the name. Later still, ‘Orchestra’ was dropped from the back end of the band’s title. And then, in 2013, ‘Royal’ was appended to the front.
The orchestra was resident at Newcastle City Hall until 2004, when it moved to its stunning new home, the Sage Gateshead, on the other side of the River Tyne. Designed by Norman Foster, this futuristic building contains two acoustically excellent concert halls, another hall used for rehearsals and a twenty-five-room music education centre. It has enjoyed artistically strong relationships with a series of impressive conducting talents, including Tamás Vásáry, Ivan Fischer, John Wilson and the current Music Director Thomas Zehetmair. As well as concerts in Gateshead, the Royal Northern Sinfonia also regularly performs in London, with international dates as far afield as Hong Kong, the Netherlands, Austria, Germany and Hungary.
It might seem surprising to some that Liverpool is the home of the country’s longest-surviving professional symphony orchestra. The ‘Phil’ (as it is universally known on Merseyside) can trace its origins back to 1840. It became a fully professional band in 1853, five years before the UK’s next-oldest symphony orchestra – the Hallé down the road in Manchester.
The orchestra was founded by a group of well-to-do merchants, who wanted to ensure that Liverpool’s cultural life rivalled that of the capital. They built their own Philharmonic Hall on Hope Street in 1849. It was destroyed by fire in 1933 with a brand-new replacement opening in 1939. It is still the home of Classic FM’s Orchestra in North West England today. Over the years, the list of its principal conductors has included Sir Malcolm Sargent, Sir Charles Groves, Sir John Pritchard and, in more recent times, the eminent Czech conductor Libor Pešek.
The Royal Liverpool Philharmonic has been a prolific recording orchestra. In the days of 78s, there were famous versions of Handel’s Messiah and Elgar’s The Dream of Gerontius, both conducted by Sargent. Later, it made pioneering first recordings of English works – notably by Delius and Bax – under the batons of Groves and Vernon Handley. It made a notable cycle of the Beethoven symphonies, conducted by Sir Charles Mackerras. More recently, the orchestra’s current Chief Conductor, the dynamic young Russian Vasily Petrenko, has produced a critically acclaimed series of recordings of the Shostakovich symphonies. The orchestra is also particularly well respected for its music education work, not least for its ‘In Harmony’ project in a school in West Everton. This is based on Venezuela’s ‘El Sistema’, which sees children completely immersed in the life of a symphony orchestra throughout their schooling.
Founded in 1946 by the flamboyant conductor Sir Thomas Beecham, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra is based in London at Chelsea’s Cadogan Hall, though it also gives regular performances at the Royal Albert Hall and at the Royal Festival Hall. The orchestra’s debut performance was at the Davis Theatre in Croydon and it has continued to perform in the town ever since. The RPO also visits Crawley, Hull, Lowestoft, Northampton and Reading on a regular basis.
Beecham made the orchestra one of the world’s great bands. After his death in 1961, which the orchestra managed to survive, it turned to other notable conductors, including Antal Doráti, Rudolf Kempe, André Previn, Walter Weller and Daniele Gatti. The current Artistic Director is Charles Dutoit. The RPO has enjoyed a long partnership with the concert promoter Raymond Gubbay, often featuring in his ‘Classical Spectacular’ concerts. It has recorded extensively and streams its entire Cadogan Hall concert series over the Internet.
Originally known simply as ‘The Scottish Orchestra’, the Royal Scottish National Orchestra was founded in 1891. Over the years, it has been conducted by an impressive list of great musicians, not least Sir John Barbirolli and George Szell, but, aptly enough, it was thanks to the leadership of the Scottish-born Sir Alexander Gibson that the orchestra really flowered to win international renown.
From 1959, Gibson conducted the orchestra for twenty-five years, becoming the longest-serving music director in the orchestra’s history. Under him, the orchestra became famous for its performances of Scandinavian music, notably that of Sibelius and Carl Nielsen. Gibson also took the orchestra into the pit when he founded Scottish Opera. In 1991, the orchestra was granted permission to add ‘Royal’ to its title (it had been renamed the Scottish National Orchestra in 1950).
Today, under its Music Director Peter Oundjian, the home of Classic FM’s Orchestra in Scotland is still Glasgow, in a brand-new building right next door to the city’s Royal Concert Hall. However, it also performs regularly in Aberdeen, Dundee, Edinburgh, Inverness and Perth. Its recording reputation is particularly impressive with eight Grammy nominations between 2002 and 2009. The orchestra is increasingly outward-facing in international terms, as it represents Scotland on its regular tours overseas.
A relative newcomer in musical circles, the Scottish Chamber Orchestra was founded in 1974. It performs throughout Scotland, touring the Highlands and Islands as well as the southern part of the country each year. Further commitments to the Edinburgh, East Neuk and St Magnus Festivals have ensured that it is heard by a wide fan base. Conductors have included Jukka-Pekka Saraste and its Conductor Laureate, Sir Charles Mackerras. The orchestra’s present Principal Conductor is London-born Robin Ticciati.
Founded in 1996, Sinfonia Cymru set out to do two things: to support young musicians at the start of their careers and to ensure that great classical music is heard in concert halls right across Wales. Its Music Director is Gareth Jones and the orchestra regularly performs with artists as wide-ranging as conductor Carlo Rizzi, harpist Catrin Finch and violinist Bartosz Woroch.
Southbank Sinfonia bridges the gap for professional musicians between the time when they finish their training at a music conservatoire and being offered their first job as part of a professional orchestra. Every year, a group of mostly twenty-something musicians from around the world come together in the Waterloo area of London, on the south bank of the River Thames, for a nine-month programme of performance and professional development, led by Music Director Simon Over, as well as other distinguished conductors. The Southbank Sinfonia can often be heard on Classic FM accompanying performances by the Parliament Choir, which is made up of members of both the House of Commons and House of Lords.
Northern Ireland’s pre-eminent symphony orchestra gives as many as ninety performances each year in Belfast, Derry/Londonderry and in London and Dublin. The orchestra’s main concert season takes place in the Ulster Hall and the Belfast Waterfront Hall. The Ulster Orchestra is unique among the main home-grown symphony orchestras in having a woman as its Principal Conductor. Following the trail blazed by Marin Alsop at the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, JoAnn Falletta is another female American conductor who is making a name for herself this side of the Atlantic. Alas, the wait for a British-born female principal conductor at the helm of one of our great symphony orchestras is still ongoing.