NEW SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA

A third breakaway ensemble was formed in 1905, this time by a group of young players frustrated at being unable to break into the two main orchestras (the Queen’s Hall and the London Symphony). They discovered in Thomas Beecham an energetic exponent of unusual repertoire, including French music and eighteenth-century byways ignored elsewhere. His conversion to the music of Delius and other British composers is legendary. But there was a falling-out at the end of 1908, leading to yet another new London orchestra, with Beecham at the helm.

The NSO found its figurehead in Landon Ronald, the third of the ‘three knights’ of British conducting (Wood, Beecham, Ronald). At first he brought his commitment to British music to NSO programming, and he retained a love for the music of Elgar; but the connection with Sunday concerts at the Royal Albert Hall and with the early recording industry has rather tainted the NSO with the middlebrow.

For programmes of Beecham’s NSO concerts (1906–1908) or  the symphony concert series 1909–1914, download the Calendar of London Concerts 1893–1914, press the Search Series tab at the bottom of the page, and select Beecham Concerts or NSO Symphony Concerts.

Further reading (see also the Beecham Concerts page)

Bridget Duckenfield, O Lovely Knight: A Biography of Sir Landon Ronald (London, 1991)

Simon McVeigh, ‘Forging a Middlebrow Canon in Edwardian London: Landon Ronald and the New Symphony Orchestra’, in Kate Guthrie and Christopher Chowrimootoo (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Music and the Middlebrow (New York, 2024), pp. 245–67

Landon Ronald, Variations on a Personal Theme (London, 1922)

Landon Ronald, Myself and Others: Written, Lest I Forget (London, 1931)