In May 1939, Malcolm Sargent went on tour in Australia,
conducting their National Symphony Orchestra. Sargent had been in talks with
ABC, an independent Australian broadcasting corporation, and after he’d guest
conducted a series of concerts and written a report on the future of Australian
music-making, ABC asked him to return on a more permanent basis. He’d only been
there about six weeks when Britain declared war on Germany. Ironically, on the
day war was announced, he was conducting a performance of Britten’s
Belshazzar’s Feast, a choral work about war and conquest. Sargent’s son, Peter
was sure that if war hadn’t been declared, Sargent would have taken his whole
family to Australia to live. ABC tried to persuade him to stay until the war
was over, but the outbreak of war made Sargent think, and his sense of honour
meant that he asked to be relieved of his duties so he could return home to
Britain. ABC refused his request, and he had to conduct about 16 concerts
before he was able to travel home to Britain, and arrived on 27 November 1939.
Apparently, English life hadn’t changed much, despite the
fact that the country was at war, and Sargent was able to conduct many one-off
concerts. But, by the summer of 1940, war had come a bit closer to home, as
Hitler turned his attention to an invasion of Britain, sending bombers over
British cities. However, the Royal Air Force was too powerful for the Luftwaffe
and the threat of an invasion passed, although the Blitz continued. The areas
attacked tended to be near ports, or manufacturing areas.
Just before the outbreak of war, the government had started
an initiative (the Council for the Encouragement of Music CEMA), to take the
arts to factory workers and to arrange for musical performances that were
affordable for ordinary people. A number of Britain’s large orchestras
performed such concerts, and were pleased to help boost morale. However,
factory workers were not always keen on the classical music on offer to them,
so in 1940 there was a need for someone to make classical music more popular.
One of England’s most well-known dance band leaders of the
day, Jack Hylton, approached Sargent’s orchestra, the London Philharmonic
Orchestra, to undertake a 3-month national tour, which would involve performing
twice a night in music halls, mostly in big industrial cities in the North and
Midlands. His aim was two-fold: To raise public spirits, and to boost the
popularity of record companies. In America, some classical musicians had
already been taking advantage of the new broadcasting medium and were quite
revered, however, this wasn’t yet the case in Britain.
Jack Hylton reassured the manager of LPO that the orchestra
wouldn’t have to play with any music hall acts, but that they did need a
flamboyant conductor with a sense of entertainment: Malcolm Sargent was the
obvious choice, because as well as being an orchestral conductor, he was also
interested in lighting and staging, and he had also been broadcasting popular
programmes on the BBC. Two weeks after being asked, Malcolm Sargent gave the
first of the Blitz Tour concerts, at the Glasgow Empire on 12 August 1940. This
concert really was the start of the attempt to take classical music to the
masses, and seems to have worked as the Empire was full, the cheap seats having
been sold mostly to workers from the dockyard.
The programme Sargent presented that evening comprised some of the more popular classical pieces, and the audience was most appreciative and it is often claimed that these “Blitz Tours” became part of the war effort.
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| Ghost sign on the side of today's Odeon in Cattle Market. |
Now, I’m hoping I’ve piqued your interest about where all this is going and what this has to do with Loughborough, but I suspect you’ve already guessed that Malcolm Sargent came to the Loughborough Empire cinema and conducted one of his Blitz Tour concerts! Moreover, a friend and I actually found a concert programme from one from of these London Philharmonic Orchestra concerts that Malcolm Sargent conducted!
What a joy! The programme was a simple fold-out A5leaflet, containing programme notes for each of the pieces being performed. As we already know, these concerts were set up with a view to raising spirits in the industrial towns of Britain, and to bring classical music to a new audience. It is wonderful to learn that the concert included Dvorak’s Carneval Overture, Eine Kleine Nachtmusik by Mozart, Delius’s Walk to the Paradise Garden, and the Peer Gynt Suite No. 1 by Grieg which filled the first half of the concert, while the second half was filled with the sounds of Tchaikovsky’s 5th Symphony in E Minor. Each half would have lasted about 50 minutes.
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| The front and back of the concert programme |
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| The middle of the concert programme with programme notes |
Isn’t this all so exciting? However, in my
efforts to find out a bit more about this concert, I trawled through the local
newspapers of the day and found an advert for the event.
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| Loughborough Echo 30 July 1943, p.1. The prices are: 7/6, 5/-, & 2/6 |
And then, joy of joys, I found a couple of
reviews! But wait!! Both reviews report that on the afternoon of the concert
Malcolm Sargent was indisposed and never made it, his conducting role being
undertaken by Warwick Braithwaite instead! Such a shame, although I do expect
that Braithwaite was an excellent conductor too!
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| Review from the Loughborough Monitor, August 5th, 1943, pg.3 |
And this it the text of the review from the Loughborough Echo, Friday August 6th, 1943, pg.3:
“London Philharmonic Orchestra”
“The London Philharmonic Orchestra, led by Jean Pougnet, gave
an excellent programme at The Empire Cinema on Sunday afternoon. Dr. Malcolm
Sargent was unable to conduct owing to indisposition and his place was taken by
Warwick Braithwaite.*
The programme opened with Dvorak’s “Carneval” Overture, the
brilliant, rhythmic character of which was much appreciated by the large
audience. A feature of this item was the excellence of the percussion
instruments, cymbals, timpani and tambourine, all of which helped to mark the
strong rhythm, together with the persistent figure of the cor anglais, which
stressed the melody.
Mozart’s Serenade Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, was perhaps the
most popular item of the programme. Written for strings only, its effect was
soothing and melodious, as Mozart always is.
The intermezzo from “A Village Romeo and Juliet” by Delius
employs more instruments than the Mozart number and abounds in fragments of
melody that seem to float about with but little decision. The work is
characteristic of Delius, and a perfect diminuendo was produced at the end.
“Peer Gynt” Suite No.1 showed Grief to advantage. Once again
rhythm was predominant and the ever-popular “In the Hall of the Mountain Kings
[sic]”was excellently given. It was noticeable that in one of the pianissimo
passages the crowing of a back-yard rooster in the neighbourhood could clearly
be heard.
Tchaikovsky’s 5th Symphony, in E Minor, concluded
the programme and showed together with what had gone before, Mr Braithwaite’s
complete control of the orchestra, whose light and shade throughout were
delightful.”
M.R.
*Henry Warwick Braithwaite was a conductor from New Zealand
who studied at the Royal Academy of Music and spent most of his career in
Britain, particularly conducting opera. He played a part in the film “Battle
for Music” which documents the plight of the LPO before and during the war.
Of course, I’m now wondering about the identity of the Echo’s music critic: Who was M.R.?
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| The Odeon during its life as the popular Curzon. |
