Editing London Symphony Orchestra (section)

===1940s and 50s===
When the Second World War broke out the orchestra's plans had to be almost completely changed. During the First World War the public's appetite for concert-going diminished drastically, but from the start of the Second it was clear that there was a huge demand for live music.<ref>Morrison, pp. 53 and 89</ref> The LSO arranged a series of concerts conducted by Wood, with whom the orchestra was completely reconciled.<ref>Morrison, p. 90</ref> When the BBC evacuated its orchestra from London and abandoned [[the Proms]], the LSO took over for Wood.<ref name=m89>Jacobs, p. 348</ref> The Carnegie Trust, with the support of the British government, contracted the LSO to tour Britain, taking live music to towns where symphony concerts were hitherto unknown.<ref>Morrison, p. 91</ref>

The orchestra's loss of manpower was far worse in the Second World War than in the First. Between 1914 and 1918 there were 33 members of the LSO away on active service; between 1939 and 1945 there were more than 60, of whom seven were killed.<ref>Morrison, pp. 53 and 92–93</ref> The orchestra found replacements wherever it could, including the bands of army regiments based in London, whose brass and woodwind players were unofficially recruited.<ref>Morrison pp. 92–93</ref>

During the war it had become clear that private patronage was no longer a practical means of sustaining Britain's musical life; a state body, the Council for the Encouragement of Music and the Arts – the forerunner of the [[Arts Council of Great Britain|Arts Council]] – was established, and given a modest budget for public subsidy.<ref>Morrison, p. 96</ref> The council made it a condition of sponsoring the LSO that the profit-sharing principle should be abandoned and the players made salaried employees. This renunciation of the principles for which the LSO had been founded was rejected by the players, and the offered subsidy was declined.<ref>Morrison, p. 97</ref>

[[File:Royal Festival Hall and Shot Tower c1959.jpg|thumb|right|The Royal Festival Hall: the LSO and LPO battled each other for residency in 1951]]
At the end of the war the LSO had to face new competition. The [[BBC Symphony Orchestra]] and the [[London Philharmonic Orchestra]] had survived the war intact, the latter, abandoned by Beecham, as a self-governing body. All three were quickly overshadowed by two new orchestras: [[Walter Legge]]'s [[Philharmonia]] and Beecham's [[Royal Philharmonic Orchestra]].<ref>Morrison, pp. 98–100</ref> To survive, the LSO played in hundreds of concerts of popular classics under undistinguished conductors. By 1948 the orchestra was anxious to resume promoting its own concert series.<ref name=m100>Morrison, p. 100</ref> The players decided to accept the Arts Council's conditions for subsidy, and changed the LSO's constitution to replace profit-sharing with salaries.<ref name=1940s/> With a view to raising its playing standards it engaged [[Josef Krips]] as conductor. His commitments in Vienna preventing him from becoming the LSO's chief conductor until 1950, but from his first concert with the orchestra in December 1948 he influenced the playing for the better.<ref name=m100/> His chosen repertoire was good for the box office: cycles of Beethoven symphonies and concertos (the latter featuring [[Wilhelm Kempff]] in one season and [[Claudio Arrau]] in another) helped restore the orchestra's finances as well as its musical standards.<ref>Morrison, pp. 101–102</ref> With Krips and others the orchestra recorded extensively for the [[Decca Records|Decca Record Company]] during the early 1950s.<ref name=decca/> The orchestra's workload in these years was second only to the other self-governing London orchestra, the LPO: the LPO played 248 concerts in the 1949–50 season; the LSO 103; the BBC SO 55; the Philharmonia and RPO 32 each.<ref>Hill, pp. 49–50</ref> When the [[Royal Festival Hall]] opened in 1951 the LSO and LPO engaged in a mutually bruising campaign for sole residency there. Neither was successful, and the Festival Hall became the main London venue for both orchestras and for the RPO and Philharmonia.<ref>Morrison, pp. 106–107</ref>

Krips left the LSO in 1954,<ref>"Mr. Krips's Resignation from L.S.O.", ''The Times'', 24 June 1954, p. 6</ref> and the following year tensions between the orchestral principals and the rank-and-file players erupted into an irreconcilable dispute. The principals argued that the future of the LSO lay in profitable session work for film companies, rather than in the overcrowded field of London concerts. They also wished to be free to accept such engagements individually, absenting themselves from concerts if there were a clash of dates.<ref>Morrison, p. 109</ref> The LSO's board, which reflected the majority opinion of the players, refused to accommodate the principals, most of whom resigned ''en masse'', to form the [[Sinfonia of London]], a session ensemble that flourished from the mid-1950s to the early 1960s, and then faded away.{{#tag:ref|Morrison comments that the LSO would probably also have faded away if it had gone down the same route. The Sinfonia of London was no longer extant at the time of the [[Alan T. Peacock|Peacock]] Committee's report on orchestral resources in Great Britain in 1970, where it is not mentioned in the lists of chamber or symphony orchestras. The Sinfonia's director, the flautist and former LSO chairman, Gordon Walker, died in 1965. The title "Sinfonia of London" was purchased from his heirs in 1982 for use by a new ensemble.<ref>Morrison, p. 109; Peacock, pp. 4–12; and "Mr. Gordon Walker", ''The Times'', 21 August 1965, p. 8</ref>|group= n}} For fifteen years after the split the LSO did little film work, recording only six soundtracks between 1956 and 1971, compared with more than 70 films between 1940 and 1955.<ref name=m280/>

To replace the departing principals the LSO recruited rising young players including [[Hugh Maguire (violinist)|Hugh Maguire]], [[Neville Marriner]] and [[Simon Streatfeild]] in the string sections, [[Gervase de Peyer]] and [[William Waterhouse (bassoonist)|William Waterhouse]] in the woodwinds, and [[Barry Tuckwell]] and [[Denis Wick]] in the brass. With the new intake the orchestra rapidly advanced in standards and status.<ref>Morrison, p. 110</ref> The average age of the LSO players dropped to about 30.<ref name=1940s>[http://lso.co.uk/page/3284/1940s-and-1950s "1940s and 1950s"], London Symphony Orchestra. Retrieved 8 July 2012</ref> In 1956 the orchestra visited South Africa to play at the Johannesburg Festival.<ref name=1940s/> The players were impressed by the dynamic director of the festival, [[Ernest Fleischmann]], and engaged him as general secretary of the orchestra when the post fell vacant in 1959.<ref>Morrison, pp. 32 and 258</ref> He was the LSO's first professional manager; all his predecessors as secretary/managing director had been orchestral players combining the duties with their orchestral playing.<ref name=conductors/>