Sir Adrian Boult

Sir Adrian Boult0:01

BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, Podcasts. Hello, I'm Lauren Laverne, and this is the Desert Island Discs podcast. This is the only extract the BBC has of this episode. The presenter is Roy Plomley. I hope you enjoy listening.

Presenter0:15

So, Adrian, in which part of the country were you born?

Presenter0:18

He was born in Chester.

Presenter0:20

Did you hear a lot of music as a young child? Yes. We lived closer to Liverpool than Chester most of my young life, and we heard Richter and a good many of the important musicians as they came to Liverpool.

Presenter0:34

At what age did you begin to study yourself? Well, I did the the ordinary public school and Oxford business, but I did a good deal of music at Oxford, and after that I went to Leipzig and plunged into it. Yes. It was in Leipzig that you studied with the great Nikisch, wasn't it? Well, I didn't actually study with him, because he'd given up the class at the Conservatoire then.

Presenter0:54

But I went to all his rehearsals and heard him three times a week. So in a sense I studied him, though I didn't study with him.

Presenter1:04

When did you get your first major opportunity to show what you could do yourself?

Presenter1:08

Well, the first time I played in Queen's Hall was in nineteen eighteen, when I was twenty nine, just at the end of the Fourteen War, I was able to give some concerts at a time when there wasn't much going on.

Presenter1:21

Very modest of you.

Sir Adrian Boult1:22

Yeah.

Presenter1:22

About this time you you were teaching in in charge of the conductors' class at the Royal College of Music, I believe you had some very distinguished pupils there. Yes, it was just after the war. Sir Hugh Allen asked me to start a class for conductors, and we had a lot of distinguished people, Leslie Hewart, Arthur Bliss, Hugh Ross, Boris Ord, Scott Goddard.

Presenter1:41

When were you appointed to your first orchestra?

Presenter1:44

That was not till twenty four, and when I was thirty-five, when I went to Birmingham. How long were you in charge of the City of Birmingham Orchestra? I had six years there.

Presenter1:53

And then came a very important event in your life. Then came the invitation to the BBC. Yes.

Presenter1:59

And a couple of years later, you were invited to form the BBC Symphony Orchestra of 120 musicians. Did you know that was in the wind when you took the post of Director of Music? It was in the wind. And.

Sir Adrian Boult2:06

Yeah.

Presenter2:09

There were there were plans for a joint orchestra and that kind of thing, and finally it was settled that we should go ahead by ourselves, and a year after it was formed I was invited to become its permanent conductor as well as director of music. Yes. Then came a very busy twenty years.

Sir Adrian Boult2:22

Well

Presenter2:27

The BBC Symphony Orchestra being virtually a national orchestra, you have the responsibility to play the whole repertoire or all music, whether you liked it personally or not. Oh, certainly.

Presenter2:37

Though, of course, uh on many occasions we had specialists, we had uh composers to conduct their own works and their special experts to conduct uh special things.

Presenter2:49

You had all the strain and complications of steering the orchestra through the war years. Yes, we had a number of difficulties. We went to Bristol first. Of course, rather a short time before we were bombed out of Bristol, we had to, on one night, I remember, perform Borodine's second symphony, the light of a few hurricane lamps. The orchestra clustered round and managed to look at the beat, too, somehow. I don't know how they did it. When did you leave the BBC?

Sir Adrian Boult3:11

I don't know how they did it.

Presenter3:14

I left the BBC in nineteen fifty when I was sixty.

Presenter3:18

according to the rules.

Presenter3:20

Yeah, it's 1951 was it.

Sir Adrian Boult3:21

But I'd be

Presenter3:22

And then you went to the London Philharmonic Orchestra. Yes, I went to a much younger job.

Presenter3:28

And for the last few years you you've been freelancing, mostly? More or less, yes.

Presenter3:33

So Adrian, now you're a freelance, more or less. Is it exciting to explore the capabilities of new orchestras, or do you prefer to work with old familiar faces?

Presenter3:42

Oh, I certainly prefer.

Presenter3:44

To work with people I know. In fact, I'd like to put it this way.

Presenter3:48

That I prefer to try and say fresh things to the same people rather than say the same things to fresh people.

Presenter3:56

Looking back over your career, which have been the most exciting musical occasions?

Presenter4:01

Oh, I think really the coronations.

Presenter4:06

The first performance, of course, of the B B C Symphony Orchestra.

Presenter4:09

That was a that was a a great night in in the old Queen's Hall.

Presenter4:14

And then I had some very impressive concerts in New York when I was asked.

Presenter4:19

Play some new British works.

Presenter4:22

with the New York Philharmonic in Carnegie Hall.

Presenter4:25

In 1939, it was a sort of tribute from the British Council to the World's Fair. Which which works are you proudest of having given the first performance of?

Presenter4:37

Oh, I think the Vaughan Williams symphonies, really.

Presenter4:42

Are British composers getting a wider hearing now than they used to? Oh, most certainly, very much so. I think all over the world it's recognized now that we are producing.

Presenter4:51

First rate composers and their work is worth hearing.