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Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra The Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra (BSO) was founded in 1893, and initially performed just 12 performances per season. Over the last 115 years, that concert schedule has grown considerably, and now includes over 130 performances a year.
Based in Poole, it travels to perform Bournemouth, Portsmouth, Southampton, Weymouth, Swindon and other points in the region. As well as classical concert hall performances, the BSO also presents several outdoor firework concerts in some of England's most prestigious country estates. The Orchestra tours and performs to many of the world's premier classical music venues, including the Royal Albert Hall and the Royal Festival Hall in London, Carnegie Hall in New York City, and the Musikverein in Vienna, Austria. The BSO has a long been associated with a stream of world-class conductors. Since its founding days under Sir Dan Godfrey, it has been associated with conductors including Constantin Silvestri, Sir Charles Groves, Rudolf Schwarz and Andrew Litton. The current Principal Conductor, one of the few successful female conductors in a profession dominated by men, is American conductor Marin Alsop.
Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra - A Brief History The BSO was derived from a uniformed Italian wind band performing in the area in the 1890s, which itself dated back to 1876. The band was incorporated as the 'First Company Band' in 1893, which marked the official founding of the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra. In the 1900s, its primary focus moved from military work to the performance of classical pieces, and the tradition of classical concerts in Bournemouth's Winter Gardens began. These concerts are still the most popular of the BSO's concert season. World War I put a strain on the orchestra, particularly because of the reduction in personnel, and it started to run into financial problems, which persisted throughout the 1930s. A further setback in this period was the retirement and subsequent death of Sir Dan Godfrey, the spiritual godfather of the BSO, which further diminished the tradition of the BSO. Although the orchestra very nearly folded in the late 1930s, it managed to keep operating through the War years as a skeleton group of 24 players. Happily, following the victory in Europe, the BSO grew back to a fully fledged symphony orchestra of 60 players again, before the end of the decade. The 1950s and 1960s brought good fortune to the BSO, and it progressed from a regional orchestra to a national asset under conductor Rudolf Schwarz. This paved the way for the band's ultimate growth in reputation to an orchestra of international renown and prestige under the stewardship of Constantin Silvestri of Romania in the 1960s - a reputation that the orchestra continues to enjoy today. During this period there were many recordings by the BSO that began to generate additional revenue, and helped to secure it financially, which in turn made it easier for the management to recruit and retain the best musicians and conductors, and therefore uphold standards.
The decades from the 1970s to the present showed the BSO undertaking its current mission of bringing fine classical music to the widest audience possible, first with conductor George Hurst bringing more accessible pieces of music into the repertoire, then with the opening of the Poole Arts Centre ('the Lighthouse') as the primary rehearsal and recording space. The orchestra celebrated its centenary in the 1990s, and since the millennium has significantly expanded its international touring schedule. There are two published histories of the BSO, (The Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, by Geoffrey Miller, published by Dorset Publishing Company, and The Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra: A Centenary Celebration by Sean Street and Raymond Carpenter (published by Dovecote Press).
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