Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra
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The Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra is an English orchestra which, despite its name, is now based in the adjacent town of Poole rather than in Bournemouth where its former home in the Winter Gardens concert hall was demolished in May 2006. The orchestra had some time before moved to the Poole Arts Centre, later renamed the Lighthouse Centre for Performing Arts, where the concert hall has 1596 seats.
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[edit] Origins
It was originally the Bournemouth Municipal Orchestra, which was founded in 1893 as a small group of wind players. It quickly expanded to become a full orchestra and gained a name for championing contemporary British music. Elgar and Holst (among others) conducted the orchestra in their own works.
[edit] Conductors
- 1893-1934 Sir Dan Godfrey
- 1934-1939 Richard Austin
- 1939-1947 Montague Birch
- 1947-1951 Rudolf Schwarz
- 1951-1961 Sir Charles Groves
- 1962-1969 Constantin Silvestri
- 1969-1972 George Hurst (never actually appointed Principal Conductor)
- 1972-1979 Paavo Berglund
- 1974-1976 Simon Rattle (Young "conductor-in-residence")
- 1980-1982 Uri Segal
- 1982-1988 Rudolf Barshai
- 1988-1994 Andrew Litton
- 1990-2000 Kees Bakels (Chief Guest Conductor)
- 1992-1995 Richard Hickox (Principal Guest Conductor)
- 1995-2000 Yakov Kreizberg
- 2001- Marin Alsop
The orchestra changed names in 1954, while Charles Groves was its principal conductor. From September 2002 Marin Alsop, formerly music director of the Colorado Symphony Orchestra, became its principal conductor. She combines the post with the same job at the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra.
[edit] Offshoots
In 1968, the Bournemouth Sinfonietta was founded. Despite considerable artistic acclaim as a small orchestra, funding difficulties led to its closure in November 1999.
[edit] Concert programme
The Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra currently gives around 150 concerts a year. Many highly acclaimed recordings include Deryck Cooke's completion of Gustav Mahler's Symphony No. 10, conducted by Simon Rattle, Elgar's "In The South" with Silvestri, Tchaikovsky's 2nd piano concerto with Rudolf Barshai and Peter Donohoe, and more recently Elgar's 3rd Symphony with Paul Daniel, and Bernstein's Chichester Psalms with Marin Alsop.
The orchestra performs regularly in the BBC Proms at the Royal Albert Hall and in the other great halls of the world, such as the Carnegie Hall in New York and the Musikverein, Vienna.
