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THE 1944 HENRY WOOD PROMENADE CONCERTS.
It was Sir Henry Wood's
Jubilee (50th Anniversary) season and scheduled
to run from 10th June to 12th August 1944. A
total of 55 concerts were planned. Because the
Queen's Hall (the traditional venue for the
Promenade series) had been destroyed in the
Blitz, the concerts were initially based at the
Albert Hall but later concerts were relocated to
Bedford because of the danger from flying bombs.
Many of the latter programmes were shortened,
generally being restricted to those items
scheduled to be broadcast.
THE PROSPECTUS of the Jubilee (50th) Season
series of concerts (left) :
Chief Conductor: Sir Henry Wood.
Associate conductors: Sir Adrian Boult, Basil
Cameron.
Orchestra: BBC Symphony Orchestra.
Soloists included:
Benno Moiseiwitsch (piano), Joan
Hammond (soprano),
Eva Turner (soprano), Benjamin
Britten (piano),
Heddle Nash (tenor), Cyril Smith
and Phyllis Sellick (piano),
Dino Borgioli (tenor), Clifford
Curzon (piano),
Louis Kentner (piano), Gerald
Moore (piano),
Nancy Evans (mezzo), Oda
Slobodskaya (soprano),
Shulamith Shafir (piano) Noel
Mewton Wood (piano).
New works programmed for performance
included:
A Toast to Stalin (Prokofiev),
Violin Concerto (Barber),
Oboe Concerto (Vaughan Williams),
Symphony No.8 (Shostakovitch),
Four Norwegian Moods
(Stravinsky),
Memorial to Lidice (Martinu)
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The Great Hall at Bedford School in
the 1940s. The fire of 1979 destroyed it
completely. On Friday 28 July 1944 Sir Henry Wood
conducted his last, somewhat traumatic (due to
some disagreement with the orchestra), rehearsal
in this hall. That evening he and the orchestra
gave a superb performance of Beethoven's
Seventh Symphony in the Corn Exchange. Sir Adrian
Boult recalled, 'Those of us who were
privileged to be there were thrilled at our old
friend's perennial energy and
youth.'
Sir Henry became ill shortly after
the concert and died in Hitchin Hospital on 19
August. He lived just long enough to hear that
the Jubilee Concert which he was to have
conducted on 10 August had gone to air on the
Home Service.
The concert was conducted by Sir
Adrian Boult and George Thalben-Ball played a
Handel Organ Concerto orchestrated by Sir Henry.
Stuart Hibberd, the BBC announcer, read a message
from Wood, 'Give my love to all my dear
musicians and my dear friends of music. I am
disappointed that I cannot be with them today,
but tell them I shall soon be with them again and
then we'll finish the Jubilee Season with a
Victory Season.'
Wood's ashes were buried in the
Church of the Holy Sepulchre without Newgate
where his life in music had started sixty five
years earlier. His bust, adorned with a laurel
wreath, is placed in the Albert Hall behind the
orchestra every night throughout the Promenade
Season. On the last night the wreath is removed
by the promenaders then taken and placed on his
tomb in the church.
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Sir Adrian Boult conducts the BBC
Symphony Orchestra in the School Hall in June
1944. The author is in the gallery - fifth from
the right!. The picture was published on the
front page of the 'Radio Times' magazine
the same year.
What is thought by many to be the
definitive version of Elgar’s Second
Symphony was recorded by the BBC Symphony
Orchestra under Boult in the Great Hall on 3, 4
and 25 August 1944 under the supervision of
Walter Legge. (At least one of the sides had to
be re-recorded due to the intrusive noises
produced by the school's timber and rush
chairs on which the orchestra was seated!) Legge,
husband of the singer Elizabeth Schwarzkopf, has
been given much deserved credit for his many
great recordings issued by EMI in the 1930s to
1960s.
The original recording of the Elgar on
78rpm discs was later transferred, first to LP,
and then several years ago on to compact disc.
Legge also supervised a recording of
Holst’s Planets Suite in the Corn Exchange,
Bedford on 2-5 January 1945.
(For an autograph and details of a
concert in Cornwall, please click here. For more
about Sir Adrian Boult, click here.)
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THE BBC RELIGIOUS DEPARTMENT was stationed in
Bedford from 1941 to 1944.
More details may be found here.
DR GEORGE THALBEN-BALL directed the BBC Singers
in the Daily Service broadcast from St Paul's
Church in Bedford.
For more details click here.
THE BBC DRAMA DEPARTMENT visited Bedford.
More details here.
GLENN MILLER and the Band of the AEF used the
BBC's broadcasting and recording facilities
while performing in the Bedford studio and local
concert hall.
More details here.
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