Yorkshire Symphony Orchestra

The Yorkshire Symphony Orchestra was an orchestra based in Leeds. It was active from its establishment in 1947 until its demise in 1955, and was based in the Leeds Town Hall. Maurice Miles was the orchestra's Principal Conductor, followed by Nicolai Malko.

Background
The Yorkshire Symphony Orchestra performed at the Royal Albert Hall in March 1950

The orchestra was founded in 1947 by the West Riding of Yorkshire. Funding for the YSO was unique as it was achieved from a multiplicity of local authorities, with notable support from the Leeds Corporation which funded the YSO with £40,000 a year to keep it going with a strength of 50 musicians. Its initial conductor was Maurice Miles who remained with the orchestra for the next decade. The inaugural season of 120 concerts included 60 in Leeds. Over thirty 20th Century British works were featured in the season.

One of the orchestra's founders was Richard Noel Middleton, the great grandfather of Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge.[1][2]

In March 1950, the Yorkshire Symphony Orchestra gave their first performance in the Royal Albert Hall in London. They returned to London a year later to perform in the new Royal Festival Hall.

Maurice Miles championed the music of British composers in many of his YSO programmes and directed a Festival of British Music in Leeds in 1951 (Festival of Britain year). He had won a scholarship to the Royal Academy of Music in London where he came under the tutelage of conductors such as Sir Henry Wood and Julius Harrison. He later conducted orchestras throughout the world including the BBC orchestras while they were stationed in Bedford during the war.

In 1953, the Film score Engineers in Steel was composed and recorded by the Yorkshire Symphony Orchestra and conducted by Maurice Miles. The film was about "An introduction to the English Steel Corporation group of companies"; history and activities, examples of their work."[3]

In 1954, Norman Del Mar was conductor of the Yorkshire Symphony Orchestra.

Nicolai Malko, the chief conductor of the Chicago-based Grant Park Orchestra, returned to England in 1954, to take up the post of chief conductor of the Yorkshire Symphony Orchestra, which he held for only one season, 1954–1955, before the orchestra, essentially supported by the rate-payers of Leeds, was disbanded. BBC Radio dramatised in 2014 the YSO's history and demise as Death of an Orchestra featuring Alan Bennett.[4] The orchestra was also the feature of the sequel BBC Radio program Birth of an Orchestra, which followed the journey of David Taylor as he created Yorkshire Young Sinfonia (YYS) and connected it the former of the YSO with the students of YYS.[5]

Principal conductors

References
  1. "JOINT MUNICIPAL ORCHESTRA - Civic Heads Discuss Yorkshire Scheme. The Yorkshire Post learns that there is a possibility of large new orchestra". Yorkshire Post and Leeds Intelligencer. Yorkshire, England. 21 February 1946. Retrieved 26 November 2018. ....private meeting in Leeds yesterday attended by Lord Mayors, Mayors or other high civic officials of Leeds, York, Hull, Dewsbury, Halifax, Harrogate, Huddersfield, Keighley and Wakefield, and Mr. R. Noel Middleton
  2. "Valerie Middleton". Yorkshire Post. 23 September 2006. Retrieved 31 October 2016. Kate's great-grandfather, Richard Noel Middleton, was a solicitor, a founder of the Yorkshire Symphony Orchestra...
  3. British Film Institute BFI Film Synopses ENGINEERS IN STEEL http://ftvdb.bfi.org.uk/sift/title/15552?view=synopsis
  4. "BBC Radio 4 - Death of an Orchestra".
  5. "Birth of an Orchestra - BBC Radio 4". BBC. Retrieved 2017-12-02.

The Yorkshire Symphony Orchestra: A Post Mortem (1) by Joseph E. Potts. The Musical Times, Vol. 97, No. 1357 (March 1956), pp. 132–133. Published by: Musical Times Publications Ltd. Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/937250

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