London Symphony Orchestra

Established in 1904, the London Symphony Orchestra holds the distinction of being the capital’s longest-standing symphonic ensemble. Its international reputation rests on a recording legacy that reaches back to the earliest commercial gramophone discs of 1912. Over the ensuing decades the orchestra balanced an extensive classical repertoire—broadcast on radio and television—with frequent contributions to motion-picture soundtracks, among them the entire Star Wars cycle. Its touring schedule began early; the first North American visit occurred in 1912, after the players narrowly missed sailing on the Titanic.

The ensemble grew directly out of the Queen’s Hall Orchestra, assembled in 1895 to support Henry Wood’s Promenade Concerts. The popularity of those summer programs prompted a parallel series of Sunday-afternoon concerts that same year. Because the players were free to send deputies, the group never functioned as a fixed body. When Wood sought to abolish the deputy system in 1904, forty-six musicians resigned and founded their own self-governing orchestra.

Organized as a player-run corporation under an elected board, the new London Symphony Orchestra invited Hans Richter to lead its inaugural concert and quickly adopted the practice of engaging guest conductors, an innovation on the London scene. Richter soon assumed the newly created post of principal conductor. The orchestra’s BBC relationship dates from 1924, when Ralph Vaughan Williams directed the premiere broadcast performance of his Pastoral Symphony. Until the BBC Symphony was formed in 1930 the LSO served as the corporation’s de facto resident ensemble, supplying both live concerts and incidental music for numerous productions. Other conductors closely linked with its early years include Edward Elgar and Thomas Beecham; during the Second World War, Henry Wood returned for a series of programs.

Wartime losses and a decline in private patronage increased dependence on state subsidy, prompting a structural overhaul in the 1950s. The orchestra abandoned profit-sharing, placed its members on salary, and raised professional standards. Its second American tour took place in 1963, followed in 1964 by the first world tour. Groundbreaking for the Barbican Arts Centre, planned as the LSO’s permanent home, occurred in the mid-1960s. The completed hall, acoustically and architecturally successful, has housed the orchestra since 1982. It opened under Claudio Abbado, who succeeded André Previn as principal conductor in 1979.

The LSO first recorded a film score in 1935 for H. G. Wells’s Things to Come and later contributed to such classics as The Bridge on the River Kwai, Doctor Zhivago, and The Sound of Music. Its association with John Williams’s Star Wars music began with the original 1977 film. That recording earned three Grammy Awards, an Academy Award, a BAFTA, and numerous additional honors; it sold more than a million copies in the United States and over 100,000 in the United Kingdom, remaining a benchmark of modern film scoring. The orchestra subsequently recorded the scores for both the first and second Star Wars trilogies as well as Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), Schindler’s List (1993), Titanic (1997), and selected Harry Potter films.

Colin Davis became principal conductor in 1995 and promptly established the orchestra’s own label, LSO Live. The inaugural release—Dvořák’s Symphony No. 9, taped at the Barbican Centre in 1999 and issued in 2000—carries catalog number 0001. Berlioz’s Les Troyens, recorded in 2000, received two Grammy Awards in 2002, while Verdi’s Falstaff won the Best Opera Grammy in 2006. In 2007 Davis assumed the newly revived title of president—the first since Leonard Bernstein’s death in 1990—and Valery Gergiev was appointed principal conductor.

Beyond the classical sphere the LSO has ventured into rock, jazz, and Broadway repertoire. After earlier crossover successes such as Symphonic Rolling Stones and Gershwin Fantasy (with Joshua Bell), the orchestra accompanied archival Ella Fitzgerald recordings on the 2017 album Someone to Watch Over Me.