The BBC Symphony Orchestra is a British orchestra based in London. Founded in 1930, it was the first permanent salaried orchestra in London, and is the only one of the city's five major symphony orchestras not to be self-governing. The BBC SO is the principal broadcast orchestra of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC).
The BBC Symphony Orchestra at the Barbican in October 2012
John Reith, Director-General of the BBC
Guest conducting the BBC SO in the 1930s: from top left, clockwise, Beecham, Koussevitzky, Mengelberg, Richard Strauss, Toscanini, Walter, Webern, Weingartner
ColinDavis
Sir Adrian Cedric Boult, CH was a British conductor. Brought up in a prosperous mercantile family, he followed musical studies in England and at Leipzig, Germany, with early conducting work in London for the Royal Opera House and Sergei Diaghilev's ballet company. His first prominent post was conductor of the City of Birmingham Orchestra in 1924. When the British Broadcasting Corporation appointed him director of music in 1930, he established the BBC Symphony Orchestra and became its chief conductor. The orchestra set standards of excellence that were rivalled in Britain only by the London Philharmonic Orchestra (LPO), founded two years later.
Christ Church, Oxford, where Boult was an undergraduate 1908–12
Gustav Holst, whose suite The Planets Boult premiered in 1918
Boult in the early 1920s
Broadcasting House, London, headquarters of the BBC, where Boult was director of music from 1930 to 1942