Adrian Boult Adrian Boult

Sir Adrian Cedric Boult, CH (/boʊlt/; 8 April 1889 – 22 February 1983) was an English 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.

Forced to leave the BBC in 1950 on reaching retirement age, Boult took on the chief conductorship of the LPO. The orchestra had declined from its peak of the 1930s, but under his guidance its fortunes were revived. He retired as its chief conductor in 1957, and later accepted the post of president. Although in the latter part of his career he worked with other orchestras, including the London Symphony Orchestra, the Philharmonia Orchestra, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, and his former orchestra, the BBC Symphony, it was the LPO with which he was primarily associated, conducting it in concerts and recordings until 1978, in what was widely called his "Indian Summer".

Boult was known for his championing of British music. He gave the first performance of his friend Gustav Holst's The Planets, and introduced new works by, among others, Elgar, Bliss, Britten, Delius, Rootham, Tippett, Vaughan Williams and Walton. In his BBC years he introduced works by foreign composers, including Bartók, Berg, Stravinsky, Schoenberg and Webern. A modest man who disliked the limelight, Boult felt as comfortable in the recording studio as on the concert platform, making recordings throughout his career. From the mid-1960s until his retirement after his last sessions in 1978 he recorded extensively for EMI. As well as a series of recordings that have remained in the catalogue for three or four decades, Boult's legacy includes his influence on prominent conductors of later generations, including Colin Davis and Vernon Handley.

Recordings

Boult was a prolific recording artist. Unlike many musicians, he felt at home in the recording studio and was happy working without an audience. His recording career stretched from the days of acoustic recording until the beginning of the digital era. His last recording of The Planets made in May 1978 was taped in experimental digital sound, although technical problems led EMI to release an analogue version.

Boult's recordings fall into three main periods. In the first, from 1920 to the end of the 1940s, he recorded almost exclusively for HMV. In the 1950s and early 1960s, he was less in demand by the major labels, and although he made a substantial number of discs for Decca, he recorded mostly for smaller labels, chiefly Pye Nixa. His last period, from the mid-1960s, sometimes referred to as his Indian Summer, was once again with HMV. With his regular collaborators the producer Christopher Bishop and the engineer Christopher Parker he made more than sixty recordings, re-recording much of his key repertoire in stereo. He also added many works to his discography that he had not recorded before.

Of the British composers, Boult extensively recorded and sometimes re-recorded major works by Elgar and Vaughan Williams. He recorded all eight then-existing symphonies by Vaughan Williams for Decca in the 1950s with the LPO, in the presence of the composer. The recording producer, John Culshaw, wrote that the composer "said very little during the sessions because he was totally in favour of Sir Adrian's approach to his music." Vaughan Williams was to have been present for the first recording of his Ninth symphony, for Everest Records in 1958, but he died the night before the session took place; Boult recorded a short introduction as a memorial tribute. All these recordings have been reissued on CD. In the 1960s Boult re-recorded the nine symphonies for EMI.

Other British composers who feature significantly in Boult's discography include Holst, Ireland, Parry, and Walton. Despite his reputation as a pioneer in Britain of the works of the Second Viennese School and other avant-garde composers, the record companies, unlike the BBC, remained cautious about recording him in this repertory, and only a single recording of a Berg piece represents this side of Boult's work. In the core continental orchestral repertoire, Boult's recordings of the four symphonies of Brahms, and the Great C major Symphony of Schubert were celebrated in his lifetime and have remained in the catalogues during the three decades after his death. Late in his recording career he recorded four discs of excerpts from Wagner's operas, which received great critical praise. The exceptional breadth of Boult's repertoire has left some well-regarded recordings of works not immediately associated with him, among which are versions of Franck's Symphony (recorded in 1959), Dvořák's Cello Concerto with Mstislav Rostropovich (1958), and a pioneering recording of Mahler's Third Symphony taped live in 1947.