LAMOUREUX AND COLONNE CONCERTS

In his ambitious agenda for the new Queen’s Hall, Robert Newman experimented in many directions, including Sunday concerts and the late summer Promenade Concerts, for which he engaged Henry Wood in 1895. But Newman approached cautiously what must have been his primary aim:  a flagship symphony concert series with a resident orchestra.

At first he promoted various short series with European conductors, partly no doubt to excite London audiences with novelty and international prestige, but also to offer a challenge to London’s orchestral community. In spring 1896 he invited Charles Lamoureux to bring his entire Paris orchestra, their discipline and finesse causing a sensation with critics and audiences alike.

The following autumn another Paris conductor followed in Lamoureux’s footsteps. Éduard Colonne’s programmes introduced even more alluring French novelties to Queen’s Hall audiences. 1896-7 saw further Lamoureux concerts, now enveloping the first Queen’s Hall Orchestra series conducted by Wood. In 1897-8 an extensive series conducted by Lamoureux (but now with the QHO itself) was interleaved with Wood’s Saturday concerts across the entire season.

Lamoureux’s illness forced the abandonment of his next venture, but the sense of competition was deliberately kindled in a new departure in 1899: Newman’s first London Musical Festival, at which Lamoureux’s orchestra first alternated with the QHO and then combined in a grand conclusion (see London Musical Festival page).

For programmes of Lamoureux’s concerts 1896–1898 and Colonne’s in 1896, download the Calendar of London Concerts 1893–1914, press the Search Series tab at the bottom of the page, and select either Lamoureux Concerts or Colonne Concerts. A further Colonne series from 1913 will be added later.

Further reading

Leanne Langley, ‘Joining up the Dots: Cross-Channel Models in the Shaping of London Orchestral Culture, 1895–1914’, in Bennett Zon (ed.), Music and Performance Culture in Nineteenth-Century Britain: Essays in Honour of Nicholas Temperley (Farnham, 2012), pp. 37–58