Town in Dorset on the south-west coast of England. In 1893, Dan Godfrey, under contract to Bournemouth Corporation, began a season of concerts with a band of 30 wind players. A winter engagement followed, when 25 players doubling on other instruments interspersed classical with lighter music. The weekly symphony concerts which continue today began two years later. In 1896 Godfrey became permanent musical director of an augmented orchestra, and the following year the Corporation took over the orchestra, which became the Bournemouth Municipal Orchestra; Godfrey also became manager of the Winter Gardens and intermingled variety acts with the concert repertory. He championed British music, performing 842 works by British composers, 160 of whom conducted, including Elgar, German, Mackenzie, Stanford and Parry. He pioneered performances of new music and gave the first English performances of Lalo’s Cello Concerto, the ballet music from Borodin’s Prince Igor, and Tchaikovsky’s first and second symphonies.
From the beginning the expenditure on the orchestra met with opposition, but Godfrey worked hard and successfully towards its continuance. In 1911 he formed the Bournemouth Municipal Choir (now the Bournemouth Symphony Chorus), which still performs regularly with the orchestra. At the 1923 Easter Festival 157 works were given in 34 concerts, and of the 93 British composers represented, 22 conducted their own works. In 1927 a concert was devoted entirely to works by British women composers. In 1929 the Bournemouth Municipal Orchestra moved to the newly built Pavilion, where it provided music for stage shows and gave open-air bandstand concerts as well as weekly symphony concerts.
In 1934 Richard Austin became director of the orchestra, by which time its reputation had been increased by broadcasting; the Corporation drastically cut the number of musicians in 1940 and Austin resigned. The remaining players, under Montague Birch, continued giving concerts at the Pavilion. Meanwhile a new orchestra, the Wessex Philharmonic, was established; it performed under Reginald Goodall and many eminent visiting conductors.
Rudolf Schwarz was appointed in 1947 to conduct a new Bournemouth Municipal Orchestra of 60 players, who returned to a rebuilt Winter Gardens and continued performing British music and new works. Charles Groves continued this policy when he took over in 1951. Constantin Silvestri, conductor from 1961 until his death in 1969, established an international reputation for the orchestra. George Hurst was artistic adviser until Paavo Berglund was appointed permanent conductor in 1972, taking the orchestra on tours to easterm Europe and Asia. He was followed by Uri Segal (1980) and Rudolf Barshay (1982). Andrew Litton, appointed in 1987, took the orchestra on a centenary tour to the USA in 1994; Yakov Kreizberg became principal conductor in 1995.
By 1954, financial pressures had forced the Corporation to give up control of the orchestra. With the support of the Arts Council and local authorities in the south and west, it became the Bournemouth SO, managed by the Western Orchestral Society (from 1991 Bournemouth Orchestras). A pattern of regional touring was established.
A chamber orchestra of about 35 players, the Bournemouth Sinfonietta, was formed in 1968, mainly to perform in smaller venues where there was no concert hall. The first conductor was Kenneth Montgomery, followed by Maurice Gendron, Ronald Thomas, Norman Del Mar, Roger Norrington, Tamás Vásáry and Alexander Polianichko. In 1995 the Sinfonietta ceased to be a salaried orchestra; it was dissolved in 2000. The home base of the Bournemouth orchestras moved from Bournemouth to a new Arts Centre in Poole in 1985 and an enterprising educational programme was undertaken.
The organist and composer Percy Whitlock was appointed municipal organist at the Pavilion in 1932; he gave frequent recitals and broadcasts on the four-manual Compton organ until his early death. Since 1913 the town has had a specialist music library controlled by Dorset County Council.
H. Watkins, ed.: The Bournemouth Municipal Orchestra … Twenty-One Years of Municipal Music, 1893–1914 (Bournemouth, 1914)
D. Godfrey: Memories and Music: Thirty-Five Years of Conducting (London, 1924)
G. Miller: The Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra (Sherborne, Dorset, 1970)
E.A. George: Music in Bournemouth: a Brief Survey of Professional Music (Bournemouth, 1979)
S. Upton: Sir Dan Godfrey and the Bournemouth Municipal Orchestra: a Biographical Discography (West Wickham, 2/1979)
S. Street and R. Carpenter: The Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, 1893–1993: a Centenary Celebration (Wimborne, Dorset, 1993)
BETTY MATTHEWS