Streaming the Classics: Sir Adrian Boult
Do you ever type a streaming query in Roon for a classical work or artist and are overwhelmed by the choices? Rather than clicking on any old recording or the first one you see, Audiophilia will make things a little easier for you and do the heavy listening.
These choices are for streaming only. Is the best in streaming also the best vinyl recording and performance? That’s for another article.
A few criteria:
The recording must be on either Apple Music, Qobuz or Tidal HiFi.
It does not have to be HiRes or MQA.
No more than ten recommendations in no particular order.
Adrian Boult was born in Chester in 1889 only a few miles away from St Helens in Lancashire where Thomas Beecham had entered the world ten years earlier. Both men were responsible for guiding much of the musical development in Britain up until the Second World War and both created world-class orchestras in Britain at a time when social privation and the distant thunder of even more war were very real threats to everyday life.
Each conductor came from an affluent background which allowed them to enjoy the best that education had to offer and it was through these opportunities that each man was moulded into the personality they became—Boult was invited to found the BBC Symphony Orchestra in 1930 and Beecham persuaded Lady Cunard of shipping fame and a variety of other investors to launch the London Philharmonic in 1931.
It is here that their career paths largely diverged and Beecham will be the subject of another article later. Before we leave I was reminded of the story my college professor James Gaddarn told me about the attitudes of the time. Gaddarn’s father was a shipbuilder and knew Lady Cunard well so he encouraged his son to keep up friendly relations with her and so James happily accepted invitations to dine with her at the Savoy and other top haunts of the day. The only problem was that Lady Cunard never carried any money so my poor teacher was left having to wire his father for outlandish sums of money in order to cover the spending on these evenings out. Such harmless oblivion to the different financial situations of individuals seemed to be part of the ethos of the times!
Adrian Boult studied in Leipzig with the legendary conductor Arthur Nikisch who later led the London Symphony and Berlin Philharmonic. The young Boult came under the influence of others such as Hans Richter and first met Elgar as a schoolboy at Westminster School. These encounters gave Boult an unparalleled education in performance styles and ideas at the start of his career and in particular gave him the grounding in German musical forms which differed from Beecham and Barbirolli who both had much more Italianate leanings in interpretation and enjoyed conducting opera at the world's leading opera houses as much as any other form of music making.
Boult made his debut in 1914 conducting the Liverpool Philharmonic and it is interesting to note that I attended his last performance in Liverpool in 1974 exactly sixty years later and he lived another nine years long surpassing his contemporaries.
He worked as an orderly officer during the first world war and conducted the first performance of Holst's The Planets in 1918 with a scratch orchestra made up of friends and musicians in London who survived the war intact.
His other achievement was to conduct the first successful performance of Elgar's Symphony No. 2 in 1920 and thus his long connection with Elgar began.
After serving as conductor of the Birmingham orchestra he was invited to form the BBC Symphony Orchestra and his twenty-year tenure as chief conductor until his forced retirement in 1950 was the backbone of the rest of his career.
I’m going to refer to the rest of his long life through the various recorded performances that I think are his greatest legacy starting. All wonderful and highly recommendable, in no particular order.
Boult recorded these works on eight separate occasions but his finest were the Lyrita performances he recorded in 1968. Decca guru Ken Wilkinson produced and these really do for me reach the pinnacle of Boult’s thoughts on these two magnificent works. The LPO who appointed him principal conductor in 1950 was the orchestra he mostly used for his last Indian summer of EMI recordings and they are in fine form here giving Boult everything.
Boult recorded these works four times and his 1962 EMI performance is the best of the bunch even though the 1970 LSO performance has a warmer sound. The 1962 recording is with the LPO.
Alfredo Campoli was a splendid violinist who enjoyed a great career and played this concerto as a rhapsody as much as a concerto and he really makes Boult listen to him and follow his ideas. This is my favourite performance of this work under Boult who recorded it with Yehudi Menuhin and Ida Haendel as well but didn’t achieve the same results.
Given his strong German training, it’s interesting that Boult never recorded any other Mahler symphony commercially except this one with the LPO in 1960. Recorded for Everest on 35 mm tape it is a fine performance in good stereo and in keeping with Boult’s dedication to clarity and phrasing—it is an impeccable reading. The LP issue of this is now a collector’s item and sells for $50-80. It’s worth a look if you can get it at a good price. [I streamed this on Qobuz and it’s exactly as JN describes it. Be aware of an awful tape dropout (down a quarter tone) on the last note of the opening movement-Ed]
Boult was a straight down-the-line German interpreter and his performance of this work is bold, swift and no-nonsense with the LPO moonlighting on Readers Digest in 1956. It’s stereo and a very energetic performance and was available on the IMG great conductors double CD issued in the late 90s.
Having conducted the first performance in 1918, Boult went on to record The Planets five times over his life including a disaster of a recording with the Vienna State Opera Orchestra. In 1967 he recorded it with New Philharmonia and it is for me the best even if a little rough around the edges. His later 1979 LPO version does not quite get there in spirit.
Boult recorded the cycle of Brahms symphonies in the 1970s as the cornerstone of his Indian summer legacy with the LPO and many consider them a fine achievement. My preference is for the 1976 Proms performance of the 1st with the BBC Symphony reissued by ICA from the BBC tapes. I was there also and can witness the amazing evening that we spent.
After Elgar, Ralph Vaughan Williams is probably the next major legacy left to us by Boult who recorded the symphonies twice in the 1950s for Decca and then in the late 60s and early 70s in stereo for EMI.
Both sets are excellent with the 1950s mono being very much recorded with Vaughan Williams's cooperation and support. However, the stereo set also gives much pleasure and his recording of the ballet Job is one of his finest records.
Both sets should be in any RVW fan’s collection as neither Barbirolli nor Sargent who conducted premiers of some of the works ever got around to making a cycle themselves.
One of Boult’s major regrets was that he never did more opera and his love of Wagner came through in his late 70s taping of large chunks of the repertoire featuring the Magic Fire Music, Parsifal Good Friday Music and Gotterdammerung, overtures and other excerpts. These performances can be found all over the streaming market and are worth a listen to hear what Boult might have been like in the opera pit.
Sir Adrian Boult died in 1983 and this year we have the opportunity to mark the fortieth anniversary of his death by enjoying some of the best and more out-of-the-way recordings that he left from his very long life on the podium.
