Editing BBC Symphony Orchestra (section)

===Background===
[[File:Chilly Gonzales with the BBC Symphony Orchestra at the Barbican.jpg|thumb|right|300px|The BBC Symphony Orchestra at the Barbican in October 2012]]

Almost from its beginning in November 1922, the [[BBC]] had started broadcasting from its "[[2LO]]" transmitter with its own musical ensembles. The first such groups were the "2LO Dance Band", the "2LO Military Band", the "2LO Light Orchestra", and the "2LO Octette", all of which began broadcasting in 1923.<ref>{{cite news|title =Broadcasting|newspaper= The Times|page=8|date =21 July 1923 }}; {{cite news|title =Broadcasting|newspaper= The Times|page=6|date =25 August 1923 }}; {{cite news|title =Broadcasting|newspaper= The Times|page=8|date =1 December 1923 }}</ref> No concert promoter would co-operate with the BBC, regarding it as a dangerous competitor, but the [[British National Opera Company]] allowed broadcasts of its performances from the [[Royal Opera House]].<ref name=k137>Kennedy, p. 137</ref> [[John Reith, 1st Baron Reith|John Reith]], the general manager of the BBC, invited the opera company's musical director, [[Percy Pitt]], to become the BBC's part-time musical adviser from May 1923. Later in the same year, Pitt conducted the BBC's first broadcast symphony concert, which included [[Antonín Dvořák|Dvořák]]'s ''[[Symphony No. 9 (Dvořák)|New World]]'' Symphony and works by [[Camille Saint-Saëns|Saint-Saëns]], [[Edward Elgar|Elgar]] and [[Carl Maria von Weber|Weber]].<ref>{{cite news|title =Symphony Concert by Wireless|newspaper= The Times|page=10|date =2 October 1923 }}</ref>

[[File:Percy-Pitt-1910.jpg|thumb|left|[[Percy Pitt]], the BBC's first director of music]]
Pitt expanded the regular eight-piece studio ensemble to form '''The Wireless Orchestra''' of 18 players, augmented to 37 for important broadcasts.<ref name=k137/> The augmented "Wireless Orchestra" conducted by [[Sir Landon Ronald]] made its first commercial recording in July 1924 by the acoustical process for [[His Master's Voice (British record label)|His Master's Voice]], [[Franz Schubert|Schubert]]'s ''[[Rosamunde (Schubert)|Rosamunde]]'' overture, which was issued in the following October.<ref>Claude Graveley Arnold, ''The Orchestra on Record 1896-1926'', p. 394. At the same time, Dan Godfrey, Jr – who was actually the Wireless Orchestra's first full-time conductor (under Pitt's close supervision) and the son of famed [[Bournemouth Municipal Orchestra]] conductor [[Daniel Eyers Godfrey|Dan Godfrey]] – was making a continuing series of acoustical recordings with the "2LO Military Band" for [[Edison-Bell]]'s "Winner" label.</ref> There was no thought at this stage that the BBC would maintain a full-scale symphonic orchestra of up to 100 players.  With Reith's approval, Pitt engaged various orchestras for a BBC concert series in 1924 at the [[Methodist Central Hall Westminster]].<ref name=k137/> Pitt and [[Landon Ronald]] conducted the [[Royal Albert Hall]] Orchestra; [[Eugene Aynsley Goossens|Eugene Goossens]] conducted the [[London Symphony Orchestra]]; and [[Hamilton Harty]] and Sir Edward Elgar conducted the orchestra of the [[Royal Philharmonic Society]].<ref>{{cite news|title =BBC Symphony Concert|newspaper= The Times|page=8|date =23 February 1924 }} (Pitt); {{cite news|title =BBC Symphony Concert|newspaper= The Times|page=8|date =23 February 1924 }}; {{cite news|title = British Broadcasting Company's Concert|newspaper= The Times|page=8|date =8 March 1924 }} (Ronald); {{cite news|title = Concerts &c|newspaper= The Times|page=10|date =17 March 1924 }} (Goossens); {{cite news|title = Concerts &c|newspaper= The Times|page=10|date =7 April 1924 }} (Harty); and {{cite news|title = Music This Week|newspaper= The Times|page=8|date =28 April 1924 }} (Elgar)</ref>

In 1924, the Wireless Orchestra, by then comprising 22 players, was contracted for six concerts a week. The following year, Pitt, by now working full-time for the BBC, as its director of music, augmented the ensemble to form the "Wireless Symphony Orchestra" for a new series of concerts broadcast from Covent Garden, conducted by [[Bruno Walter]], [[Ernest Ansermet]] and [[Pierre Monteux]];<ref name=k138>Kennedy, p. 138</ref> at this time Reith also allowed Pitt and the Wireless Symphony Orchestra to contract with the [[Columbia Graphophone Company]] to make a substantial series of electrically recorded discs, most of which were recorded in the [[Methodist Central Hall Westminster]] which the BBC had previously used for concerts.  In 1927 the BBC and Covent Garden collaborated in a series of public concerts with an orchestra of 150 players under conductors including [[Richard Strauss]] and [[Siegfried Wagner]]. Although the orchestra was large, it was not good. The BBC attempted to stop its contracted players sending deputies to rehearsals and even to concerts, but was unsuccessful.{{refn|Despite the efforts of [[Henry Wood|Sir Henry Wood]], [[Thomas Beecham|Sir Thomas Beecham]] and others, the "deputy system" remained a traditional part of the London orchestral scene. A player booked for a concert could accept a better-paid engagement and send a substitute in his stead. The treasurer of the Royal Philharmonic Society described the system thus: "A, whom you want, signs to play at your concert. He sends B (whom you don't mind) to the first rehearsal. B, without your knowledge or consent, sends C to the second rehearsal. Not being able to play at the concert, C sends D, whom you would have paid five shillings to stay away."<ref>Levien, John Mewburn, ''quoted'' in Reid, p. 50</ref>|group= n}} In January 1928 ''[[The Musical Times]]'' protested:

{{blockquote|The B.B.C. has been blamed for devoting too much time to the classics, and also for not giving them all that is due to them; it has been held responsible for the inferiority of the apparatus of the listener-in; it has been censured on a variety of trifling points, but never for the one heinous offence it has committed, and goes on committing: for this corporation, with all its assured and conspicuous wealth, has given and is giving us the worst orchestral performances ever heard in London. … This year at Queen's Hall they have assembled an orchestra which sounds as if it were composed in great part of "substitutes".<ref>{{cite journal|title =The B.B.C.|journal = The Musical Times|volume = 69|issue = 1019|page=70|date =1 January 1928|jstor=917033 }}</ref>|}}

In 1927, the BBC took over the responsibility for the [[the Proms|Promenade Concerts]], widely known as "the Proms". At first [[Henry Wood]], the founding conductor, persuaded the corporation to engage his Queen's Hall Orchestra for each Prom season; from 1930 onwards, the BBC provided the orchestra.<ref>Cox, p. 91</ref>

The inadequacy of the BBC's players, and also of the established London orchestras, was shown up by the [[Berlin Philharmonic]], under [[Wilhelm Furtwängler]], in two concerts in 1927. A historian of the [[Queen's Hall]], Robert Elkin, writes, "At this period the standard of orchestral playing in London was distinctly low, and the well-drilled efficiency of the Berliners under their dynamic conductor came as something of a revelation."<ref>Elkin, p. 93</ref> These, and later concerts by the same orchestra, gained plaudits from the public and music critics at the expense of the London orchestras. The chief music critic of ''[[The Times]]'', [[Frank Howes]], later commented, "the British public ... was electrified when it heard the disciplined precision of the Berlin Philharmonic... This apparently was how an orchestra could, and, therefore, ought to sound".<ref>''Quoted'' in Elkin, p. 49</ref> After the Berliners, London heard a succession of major foreign orchestras, including the Amsterdam [[Concertgebouw Orchestra]] under [[Willem Mengelberg]] and the [[New York Philharmonic|Philharmonic-Symphony Orchestra of New York]] under [[Arturo Toscanini]].<ref>{{cite journal|last=Patmore|first=David|title = EMI, Sir Thomas Beecham, and the formation of the London Philharmonic Orchestra|journal = ARSC Journal |volume=32 |issue=1|pages =11–27|year =2001|id={{ProQuest|968184}}}} {{subscription required}}</ref>

[[File:INF3-49 Sir John Reith Artist Wooding.jpg|thumb|upright|150px|right|[[John Reith, 1st Baron Reith|John Reith]], Director-General of the BBC]]

Among those determined that London should have a permanent orchestra of similar excellence were Reith and the conductor [[Thomas Beecham|Sir Thomas Beecham]]. The latter aimed at setting up a first-rate ensemble for opera and concert performances and, though no admirer of broadcasting, he was willing to negotiate with the BBC if this gave him what he sought. Reith's concern was that the BBC should have a first-rate radio orchestra. The critic [[Richard Morrison (music critic)|Richard Morrison]] writes: <blockquote>Reith's BBC of the 1920s was ... imbued with an almost religious zeal for "enlightening" the public through the magical medium of the wireless. An orchestra, and particularly one that was unencumbered by commercial constraints and thus free to deliver the highest of highbrow programmes, would fit very well into that idealistic philosophy.<ref>Morrison, p. 72</ref></blockquote> Landon Ronald brought Reith and Beecham together in April 1928; negotiations and preliminary arrangements continued for more than 18 months until it became clear that the corporation and the conductor had irreconcilable priorities for the proposed new ensemble.<ref name=nk>{{cite journal|title = Beecham and the BBC Symphony Orchestra: A Collaboration that Never Happened|last=Kenyon|first=Nicholas|journal = The Musical Times|volume=121|issue=1652|pages =625–628|date = 1 October 1980|jstor = 961148|doi=10.2307/961148}} {{subscription required}}</ref> Beecham withdrew and, as described by [[Nicholas Kenyon]]:

{{blockquote|With the collapse of the Beecham scheme, the way was open for the BBC's music department to design an orchestral scheme truly suited to broadcasting needs – a plan for a 114-piece orchestra that could split into four different smaller groups, which had been devised in the autumn of 1929 by [[Edward Clark (conductor)|Edward Clark]] and [[Julian Herbage]] – and to place that orchestra's fortunes under the direction of the man who was to guide it with the utmost distinction for the next 20 years, the BBC's new director of music, Adrian Boult.<ref name=nk/>|}}