Editing Philharmonia Orchestra (section)

===First concerts===
[[File:Sir-Thomas-Beecham-US-1948.jpg|left|thumb|upright|alt=elderly, balding man with short white moustache and beard, conducting an orchestra|[[Thomas Beecham|Sir Thomas Beecham]], conductor of the Philharmonia's first concert in 1945 (image from 1948)]]
Legge secured the services of many talented young musicians still serving in the armed forces. He first assembled a "Philharmonia String Orchestra" for recordings in 1945, composed of musicians from the [[RAF]] orchestra.<ref>Pettitt, p. 26</ref> He then recruited wind and percussion players, including some of the country's top instrumentalists who had been playing in other orchestras during the war.<ref name=p27/> At the Philharmonia Orchestra's first concert, on 27 October 1945,<ref>"Philharmonia Concert Society", ''[[The Times]]'', 29 October 1945, p. 8</ref> more than sixty per cent of the players were still officially in the services.<ref>Schwarzkopf, p. 93</ref> Beecham conducted the concert (for the fee of one cigar), but as he refused to be Legge's employee and Legge refused to cede control of the orchestra, they went their separate ways. Beecham founded the [[Royal Philharmonic Orchestra]] (RPO) the following year.<ref>Schwarzkopf, pp. 92–94</ref>

Unlike the existing London orchestras, but like Beecham's Royal Philharmonic, the early Philharmonia was not a permanent ensemble: it was convened ''ad hoc'' from available players on Legge's list. Several of those players were also on Beecham's list, and were able to play for both orchestras, including the horn player, [[Dennis Brain]], the clarinettist [[Reginald Kell]] and the timpanist James Bradshaw.<ref>Jenkins, pp. 99–100; and Pettitt, p. 27</ref> Although this gave both orchestras access to the finest players, a review of the London orchestral scene of the late 1940s commented, "The Philharmonia and Royal Philharmonic share a very serious disability: that neither is a permanently constituted orchestra. Both assemble and disperse more or less at random ... there is no style which is distinctively RPO or Philharmonia."<ref>Hill, p. 214</ref> It was widely felt in musical circles that the Philharmonia was essentially a recording orchestra that also gave concerts, although Legge firmly denied this.<ref name=legge/>{{refn|As late as 2001 the ''[[Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians]]'' described the early Philharmonia as "primarily an EMI recording orchestra".<ref>Wright, David C. H. [http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-0000016904 "London: VII. Musical life since 1945"], ''Grove Music Online'', Oxford University Press, 2001, retrieved 29 June 2018 {{subscription required}}</ref>|group= n}} Nevertheless, the orchestra played far fewer concerts than the older London orchestras: in 1949–50 the Philharmonia gave 32 concerts compared with 55 by the BBC SO, 103 by the LSO, and 248 by the LPO.<ref>Hill, pp, 49–50</ref>

From its early years the orchestra played under prominent conductors including [[Richard Strauss]] for a single concert in 1947, and from 1948 onwards, [[Wilhelm Furtwängler]] and [[Herbert von Karajan]] for concerts and recordings.<ref name=legge/> Until the opening of the [[Royal Festival Hall]] in 1951, London lacked a suitable hall for symphony concerts.{{refn|The [[Queen's Hall]], regarded as an excellent concert venue, had been destroyed by bombing during the war.<ref>Pound, pp. 271–273</ref>|group= n}} Filling the vast [[Royal Albert Hall]] was difficult, except for such sell-out performances as Strauss's concert, a cycle of the [[Ludwig van Beethoven|Beethoven]] piano concertos with [[Artur Schnabel]] as soloist (1946), or the world premiere of Strauss's ''[[Four Last Songs]]'' with [[Kirsten Flagstad]] as soloist and Furtwängler conducting (1950).<ref>"The Philharmonia Orchestra", ''[[The Times]]'', 23 May 1950, p. 6</ref> For other, less popular, concerts in the orchestra's early years Legge was partly dependent on financial support from a musical benefactor, the last [[Jayachamaraja Wodeyar Bahadur|Maharaja of Mysore]].<ref>Pettitt, pp. 45–46</ref>