Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra

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It seems, at first glance, a bit unlikely that an orchestra based in a seaside town in the south west of England, would rank alongside the greatest ensembles in the world.

But the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra has been steered by some of the great names in conducting, each one nudging the orchestra in new and exciting directions. Take today’s inspirational maestro – the Ukrainian Kirill Karabits, and his love of Russian music. Their recordings of the Prokofiev Symphonies have been one of the critically acclaimed hits of recent years. Ten years ago, the US conductor Marin Alsop, the first ever female principal conductor of a UK orchestra, thrilled audiences with American repertoire and much more besides, and made one of the finest recordings of Dvorak’s New World Symphony with the BSO on Naxos.

Rewind even further to the late ’90s, another American, Andrew Litton, something of a British music expert, helped the orchestra win a Grammy with a scintillating recording for Decca of Walton’s Belshazzar’s Feast. Even Finnish conductor Paavo Berglund’s 1970s recordings of the Sibelius Symphonies with the BSO are still regarded as definitive. This orchestra’s legacy is extraordinary.

Strange as it might seem, the Bournemouth Symphony’s beginnings are rooted in a small Italian wind band that had been entertaining Bournemouth since the 1870s. Under conductor Dan Godfrey’s leadership, who was later knighted for his services to the ensemble, the Bournemouth Municipal Orchestra, as it was then known, performed regularly at the town’s impressive glass Winter Gardens and by 1895 had become a full symphony orchestra, making a name for itself particularly for championing British composers such as Stanford, Holst and Elgar, who conducted the orchestra in 1908.

The 1920s saw the orchestra bloom with Elgar, Holst, Walton and Vaughan Williams all queuing up to conduct; in 1923 Bartok appeared with the BMO to perform his own Piano Rhapsody. Two world wars and several musician strikes did little to stop the rise of what became, in 1954, the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra. Since then, the BSO has enjoyed golden era after golden era, too many to mention here, under legendary conductors such as Sir Charles Groves, Rudolph Barshai, Andrew Litton, Marin Alsop and today’s thrilling maestro, Kirill Karabits, who was named the Royal Philharmonic Society’s Conductor of the Year in 2013.

And thanks to the support of its audiences, the BSO continues to be not only one of the brightest musical gems in the south west – but in the world.

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