Preview: Adrian Boult's 10 Best Recordings and the REAL Symphonic Golden Age

English conductor Adrian Boult wasn't just a passionately devoted advocate of 20th-century British music; he was one of the first conductors whose reputation did not depend on his conducting of the German standard repertoire. In this preview of the ClassicsToday.com survey of his ten greatest recordings (ad free, with sound samples), we explore his remarkable career in some detail. Please consider becoming a ClassicsToday Insider for only $49/year by signing up here: www.classicsto...

[@Otorres1]

The British seemed to also single-handedly maintain a choral tradition that I don't think exists anywhere else. There is indeed a treasure trove of music that hasn't been explored really.

[@frankporter6169]

Psychic David. I was just going to play Boult conducting Vaughan Williams' "Job". My favorite Boult recordings are "Norfolk Rhapsody", "Fantasia On A Theme By Thomas Tallis", and of course Holst's "Planets", as well as all of the second cycle of the Vaughan Williams symphonies.

[@phamthanh4785]

The only recording of Boult that I've heard so far is his Schubert 9th. And I like it a lot.

[@ayethein7681]

I still have the Boult Shostakovich 6 . Raised my eyebrows when I saw he was the conductor.

[@MarilynCrosbie]

My late husband, Michael J. Crosbie had the privilege of studying conducting with Sir Adrian Boult after had had spent a year studying the oboe in the Royal Military School of Music at Kneller Hall, Twickenham.

[@ianbarbarafry575]

Thank you so much for articulating something that's been on my mind for years, but have never been able to express properly. Great analysis.

[@davidaiken1061]

A very interesting presentation, challenging the usual narrative that privileges, and implicitly affirms the supremacy of, the Austro-German tradition. THose of a certain age grew up with this narrative reinforced from every angle; from popularizers of classical music such as Leonard Bernstein (viz. his Norton Lectures), and from our music history and theory professors in college music programs. I never thought there were alternative narratives until I started exploring the profusion of national styles and folk-based traditions of the 19th Century, as well as composers of the 20th Century who extended the range of tonality (and modality) without bowing the knee to atonal and serial orthodoxy. Thanks, David, for taking on this important topic, while also touting the achivement of Boult in music of his compatiots. I would only add that Boult was also a distinguished interpreter of Handel (an adopted Brit). His monaural Messiah and early stereo Acis and Galatea are enduring classics, even if stylistically backward from the vantage of period perfomance practice. Bouult also made several fine Sibelius recordings for Vanguard, which introduced this listener to the world of that that composer's tone poems.

[@lawrencechalmers5432]

I grew up on His Rachmaninov 2nd Symphony with him and to be included in this set (so I was told by Eloquence) is the best recording of the two of Searle's 1st Symphony.

[@westleywallace7778]

Dave, Thanks for the great suggestion of the Moeran disc. Really is beautiful stuff! Wishing you a happy and healthy New Year so far!

[@gerrykan3437]

Hi Dave: Thanks for the interesting and insightful history lesson! Coincidentally, while I was listening to this, I was looking at his 1973 (mono) LP of Bruch's violin concertos (1+2) with Yehudi Menuhin. To be honest I didn't know much of Boult, so thanks for putting him in the proper perspective. Happy New Year!

[@ianpunter4486]

About Boult...not his recordings, for which I apologise, - but perhaps more to do with your "How I discovered Vaughan Williams". July 1965, I stood in the arena at the BBC Proms. Boult was conducting the ROH Covent Garden Orchestra, in Bartok Vc 2, with Menuhin, and VW 4th Symphony. Some introduction!

[@johnd1442]

One of Boult's less well-known recordings is of Elgar's The Music Makers with several quotations from some of his own works including Nimrod. It's hardly a major work but the EMI Boult recording with Dame Janet Baker and the London Philharmonic is just sublime. I never saw Boult conduct but recall he was on the jury of some conducting competition which was televised. Summing up his reactions, he pointed out that too many of the contestants needed to divorce their left and right hands. He called the constant mirroring of each hand "the Grecian vase school of conducting!"

[@dmntuba]

I really wish you had been one of my music professors in college 👍

[@albertbauli]

His Holst’s Planets is one of its best recordings evernmade from that piece together with Steinberg BSO.

[@culturalconfederacy782]

You nailed it in this video. One family of musicians that is rarely talked about, are the Hartmanns of Denmark. You mentioned Karl Amadeus. Going back to the early to mid 18th Century, there was Johan Ernst Hartmann. Followed by his son August Wilhelm and grandson Johnan Peter Emilius. Johan Peter's symphonies are a real delight. As are the four on the CPO label by Johan Ernst.

[@symphonynut3291]

Boult's riveting Schumann cycle with the London Philharmonic is my favorite.

[@DavesClassicalGuide]

I think it's more stapling than riveting, but however you choose.

[@leitfie3579]

He had a thing about tempi in Schumann. He played the symphonies as piano duets with Clara's last pupil, Fanny Davies, and from her he took what he believed to be the genuine Schumann tempi - hence the very very quick first movement of the 'Rhenish', for example. I like his Schumann, but you have to allow for the fact that the poor LPO, cash strapped and struggling, only just manages .....

[@DavesClassicalGuide]

@@leitfie3579 Exactly...

[@jgesselberty]

"All of that stuff we hate to listen to." Thanks for this, because 90% of the time it is true.

[@nickhamshaw1234]

Well, off the back of this I’ve completed my Boult set - the Elgar was quite hard to track down - and look forward to it. I already know and love the VW. So, Dave, how about the top 10 recordings of conductors performing their own works? Britten, Bernstein……?

[@DavesClassicalGuide]

I don't see much point in doing that. Composers doing their own works convey a certain authority that's interesting and pretty much indisputable. The opposite might be fun, though--awful recordings of composers performing their own works...

[@bbailey7818]

@@DavesClassicalGuide start with Hindemith? Just sayin'.

[@daviddavenport9350]

Another thing about the English Orchestras is that a lot of them were "pickup" Orchestras in that they drew on a bunch of professional musicians and their personnel was somewhat impermanent I guess is the best word.

[@TheCastlepoet]

Quite a surprising and engaging video. I wasn't expecting Boult to be the topic of a "Ten Best Recordings" talk anytime soon, but this has quite piqued my interest. Fairly or unfairly, two terms that come to mind when I think of Boult are “workmanlike” and “literal.” I recall reading (in Michael Kennedy's biography?) that Boult believed that the conductor should not have favorite composers and works; the conductor's job was simply to lead a professional performance of whatever score he happened to be conducting and not superimpose his own ideas on the music. (Boult often conducted music for which he did not seem to have any obvious personal affinity--he once even conducted the scherzo of the Bruckner 6th, though not the rest of the symphony, in concert!) In that respect, he was rather different from such celebrated compatriots as Beecham and Barbirolli (not to mention Stokowski), who certainly didn't hide their enthusiasms for certain composers and who didn't hesitate to take liberties with any given score. At the same time, Boult is so closely identified with Elgar, Vaughan Williams, and several other contemporary British composers that we feel he he must have been passionately devoted to their music. In one letter to Boult, Vaughan Williams asserted that a conductor should possess two particular qualities above all others--the first being “faithfulness to the composer” and the second being “the power of the conductor to express himself to the full.” VW then bluntly told Boult that he (Boult) did not always succeed in the second but could always be relied on to achieve the first. (Of course, we know that there's really no such thing as entirely “objective” or non interventionist conducting, even when the conductor professes that the only thing that matters is the score; see Toscanini.) Incidentally... In 1921, Boult heard Furtwangler conduct The Ninth and praised him effusively, declaring that Furtwangler “got the last ounce out of every bar, making it warm and vital to an amazing extent.” However, Boult noted, “sometimes one felt [the performance] was in danger of falling to pieces...” It's hard to imagine two conductors more different than Boult and Furtwangler, and Boult's comments seem to sum up this difference perfectly.

[@daviddavenport9350]

re: getting the bulk of my musical training in the 1960s and early 1970s (what my violin playing wife dubbed the "Honk, Squeak, Fart" era in music.....I, as a lover of both Renaissance music and Ralph Vaughan Williams (I guess not a surprising combo afterall) was a bit on the outs, although, as a percussionist I played an inordinate amount of "contemporary" music.....however, the very first work I heard the Cleveland Orchestra play live in Severance Hall when first I got into the Cleveland Institute was Rachmaninoff's 2nd Symphony.....and of course Rachmaninoff was left out of every 20th C Music survey course I have ever taken.....although I have heard more Rachmaninoff that almost anybody else in my lifetime in music.

[@henryfate7170]

Was this about Adrian Boult?

[@Don-md6wn]

I thought it was more interesting than a talk about Adrian Boult would have been. Edit - not that I have anything against Boult; I love the EMI box of Vaughan Williams symphonies and other stuff from the early 70's.

[@henryfate7170]

@@Don-md6wn Right, a talk about the "German Symphonic History and Legacy".

[@leslieackerman4189]

Yes. I am starting to get frustrated with titles that lure into spending money. What a novel idea.

[@henrygingercat]

@@leslieackerman4189 It would have been nice to know what DH thinks Boult’s 10 best are.

[@henryfate7170]

@@henrygingercat Stay tuned until next week when David will tell you his favorite choices for Erich Leinsdorf's Boston Symphony recordings.

[@sidesup8286]

I like his extended Tchaikovsky Nutcracker Suite. Perhaps not 100% as emotional as the John Lanchberry interpretation with the Philharmonia Orchestra, but really good. A very versatile conductor.

[@rsmickeymooproductions4877]

Hi Dave, looks like Eloquence are releasing a SIR ADRIAN BOULT - THE DECCA LEGACY box(es) edition. Will you be reviewing this?

[@DavesClassicalGuide]

Sure.

[@robertbubeck9194]

Oh, how I loved this discussion by Dave. Unfortunately, limiting oneself to 10 of necessity leaves out some other worthy candidates. One is the Boult/LPO/EMI of the original version of the RVW Serenade to Music which is one of the most beautiful pieces of music in one of the most gorgeous recordings ever made. Surely, another is the Boult/LPO/EMI RVW No. 5 which, arguably, no one has ever topped. In particular, listen to Movement 3, Romanza, which Boult treated with (what permit me to call) a rolling forward feel that is unequaled. Music over sonics, however it might be mentioned that Boult and the listening public were blessed in the period of the 60s and 70s with Brit recording expertise aimed at LP technology at its zenith. Dave hinted at this. Those British pressings by EMI (e.g., Parker and Bishop) and Lyrita still stand as marvels in the art of recorded music.

[@DavesClassicalGuide]

Indeed they do.

[@lawrencechalmers5432]

Eloquence has an upcoming edition of the Decca recordings.

[@robertdandre94101]

for a little history....the original motion picture soundtrack score of the movie of david lean '' lawrence of arabia '' ( 1963) is conduct by sir adrian boult with the london philarmonic.....his name is on the generic

[@TheCastlepoet]

There is some dispute as to how much of the score, if any of it, Boult actually conducted, and whether anything that Boult might have conducted eventually wound up in the film. According to one story, Boult was unable to cue the music to the precise timings necessary to match the given scene, and he was replaced as conductor by the composer, Maurice Jarre. However, supposedly for contractual reasons, Boult's name remained in the credits as the conductor.

[@robertdandre94101]

@@TheCastlepoet thank you for the précisions.

[@frankporter6169]

@@TheCastlepoet Sounds legit!

[@geraldmartin7703]

I have the 10-CD, EMI/Warner set, "Tchaikovsky to Gershwin". It has the 1945, 1967, and 1978 recordings of Holst's "The Planets". That's OK-- it's why I bought the box.

[@daviddorfman320]

Didn't you used to refer to the Planet Baxia? So, some Bax is good, or just well done?

[@DavesClassicalGuide]

Lots of it is good. What has Baxia got to do with that?

[@barryguerrero7652]

The London Phil. issued a very truncated, concert version of "Doktor Faust" (Busoni) with Boult conducting from 1959, that strikes me as better and more idiomatic than the other commercial recordings. The younger D. Fischer-Dieskau was the baritone (Faust). Just an F.Y.I. . . . it's enough "Doktor Faust" for me.

[@daviddavenport9350]

But in the 60s and 70s in America anyway....noone even talked about British music, much less performed it on a regular basis....

[@porcepic44]

@David Hurwitz : Just saw on the Naxos catalogue they had an "American Jewish collection". So you might make a video about "Jewish music in classical music", or "Jewish inspirations". Who but you could be our cicerone ? Of course you would dedicate such a video to the old silly, nazi woman who used to call you to complain about "all that jewish music" !

[@DavesClassicalGuide]

LOL! I'll think about it!

[@jimyoung9262]

Couldn't agree more about non-tonal music. A lot of it sounds like it was written by a kindergardener high on acid.

[@kirkpatticalma7911]

@@pablov1973 True, but would you rather listen to an hour of Shoenberg or Cage, or Mozart and, let's say Beethoven?

[@TienTran-nm6ms]

@@pablov1973 The effort seems disproportionate to the rewards.

[@DavesClassicalGuide]

To be fair, we need to distinguish between the horrible "academic serialist culture," and individual works, which have to be HEARD and evaluated on a case by case basis. There is plenty of excellent music in this style, in which the effort is worth it. Besides, "effort" is a relative term; some listeners require more, some less.

[@robkeeleycomposer]

@@kirkpatticalma7911 I can think of at least twenty works of Schoenberg I'd happily listen to again and again, and not only the early, tonal works. The same for Berg, Dallapiccola - gorgeous, rich, moving music. It's all a matter of taste.

[@davidbo8400]

@@pablov1973 You're not the only one. Great serial or atonal works can be quite refreshing, enjoyable, and thought provoking, including Schoenberg's. That doesn't mean we can't poke a little fun at these works once in a while, and nobody is forced to like them too. They simply opened up new avenues of expression as well as broadened the scope of compositional techniques. On the other hand, Boulez's (and the likes) serial dogmatics have had a detrimental effect on "classical" music making for decades, at a time when a more thoughtful, considerate, open-minded and open-hearted and less euro-centric approach was very much needed just to keep a wider audience interested.