68 Facts About Henry Wood

Sir Henry Joseph Wood was an English conductor best known for his association with London's annual series of promenade concerts, known as the Proms.

Henry Wood conducted them for nearly half a century, introducing hundreds of new works to British audiences.

Henry Wood was engaged by the impresario Robert Newman to conduct a series of promenade concerts at the Queen's Hall, offering a mixture of classical and popular music at low prices.

The series was successful, and Henry Wood conducted annual promenade series until his death in 1944.

Henry Wood declined the chief conductorships of the New York Philharmonic and Boston Symphony Orchestras, believing it his duty to serve music in the United Kingdom.

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Henry Wood had an enormous influence on the musical life of Britain over his long career: he and Newman greatly improved access to classical music, and Wood raised the standard of orchestral playing and nurtured the taste of the public, presenting a vast repertoire of music spanning four centuries.

Henry Wood senior had started in his family's pawnbroking business, but by the time of his son's birth he was trading as a jeweller, optician and engineering modeller, much sought-after for his model engines.

Henry Wood's wife played the piano and sang songs from her native Wales.

Henry Wood received little religious inspiration at St Sepulchre, but was deeply stirred by the playing of the resident organist, George Cooper, who allowed him into the organ loft and gave him his first lessons on the instrument.

Cooper died when Wood was seven, and the boy took further lessons from Cooper's successor, Edwin M Lott, for whom Wood had much less regard.

At the age of ten, through the influence of one of his uncles, Henry Wood made his first paid appearance as an organist at St Mary Aldermanbury, being paid half a crown.

In June 1883, visiting the International Fisheries Exhibition at South Kensington with his father, Henry Wood was invited to play the organ in one of the galleries, making a good enough impression to be engaged to give recitals at the exhibition building over the next three months.

Henry Wood accompanied the opera class, taught by Garcia's son Gustave.

On leaving the Royal Academy of Music in 1888, Henry Wood taught singing privately and was very successful, attracting "more singing pupils than I could comfortably deal with" at half a guinea an hour.

Henry Wood worked for Carte at the Savoy as assistant to Francois Cellier on The Nautch Girl in 1891.

Henry Wood remained devoted to Sullivan's music and later insisted on programming his concert works when they were out of fashion in musical circles.

Henry Wood recalled that his first professional appearance as a conductor was at a choral concert in December 1887.

Henry Wood's first sustained work as a conductor was his 1889 appointment as musical director of a small touring opera ensemble, the Arthur Rouseby English Touring Opera.

Henry Wood eventually negotiated a release from his contract, and after a brief return to teaching he secured a better appointment as conductor for the Carl Rosa Opera Company in 1891.

In 1894 Henry Wood went to the Wagner festival at Bayreuth where he met the conductor Felix Mottl, who subsequently appointed him as his assistant and chorus master for a series of Wagner concerts at the newly built Queen's Hall in London.

Henry Wood introduced major classical works, such as Beethoven symphonies, normally restricted to the more expensive concerts presented by the Philharmonic Society and others.

Just before 8 o'clock I saw Henry Wood take up his position behind the curtain at the end of the platform – watch in hand.

Newman and Henry Wood soon felt able to devote every Monday night of the season principally to Wagner and every Friday night to Beethoven, a pattern that endured for decades.

Henry Wood had nine hours to rehearse all the music for each week's six concerts.

Henry Wood persisted in this practice until 1937, when the excellence of the BBC Symphony Orchestra persuaded him that it was no longer necessary.

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Henry Wood's preferred layout was to have the first and second violins grouped together on his left, with the cellos to his right, a layout that has since become common.

Between the first and second season of promenade concerts, Henry Wood did his last work in the opera house, conducting Stanford's new opera Shamus O'Brien at the Opera Comique.

In January 1897 Henry Wood took on the direction of the Queen's Hall's prestigious Saturday afternoon symphony concerts.

Henry Wood continually presented new works by composers of many nationalities, and was particularly known for his skill in Russian music.

Henry Wood successfully challenged the widespread belief that Englishmen were not capable of conducting Wagner.

In 1898, Henry Wood married one of his singing pupils, Olga Michailoff, a divorcee a few months his senior.

Speyer put up the necessary funds, retained Newman as manager of the concerts, and encouraged him and Henry Wood to continue with their project of improving the public's taste.

At the beginning of 1902, Henry Wood accepted the conductorship of that year's Sheffield triennial festival.

Henry Wood continued to be associated with that festival until 1936, changing its emphasis from choral to orchestral pieces.

Henry Wood bore no grudge and attended their first concert, although it was 12 years before he agreed to conduct the orchestra.

Henry Wood had great sympathy for rank-and-file orchestral players and strove for improvements in their pay.

Henry Wood sought to raise their status and was the first British conductor to insist that the orchestra should stand to acknowledge applause along with the conductor.

Henry Wood introduced women into the Queen's Hall Orchestra in 1913.

Henry Wood conducted his own compositions and arrangements from time to time.

Henry Wood gave his Fantasia on Welsh Melodies and Fantasia on Scottish Melodies on successive nights in 1909.

Henry Wood composed the work for which he is most celebrated, Fantasia on British Sea Songs, for a concert in 1905, celebrating the centenary of the Battle of Trafalgar.

Henry Wood played it at the Proms more than 40 times, and it became a fixture at the "Last Night of the Proms", the lively concert marking the end of each season.

Henry Wood worked with his wife for many concerts, and was her piano accompanist at her recitals.

On his return, Henry Wood resumed his professional routine, with the exception that, after Olga's death, he rarely performed as piano accompanist for anyone else; his skill in that art was greatly missed by the critics.

Henry Wood discouraged this, sometime by gesture and sometimes by specific request printed in programmes.

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Towards the end of the war, Henry Wood received an offer by which he was seriously tempted: the Boston Symphony Orchestra invited him to become its musical director.

Henry Wood had been guest conductor of the Berlin and New York Philharmonic Orchestras, but he regarded the Boston orchestra as the finest in the world.

In 1921 Henry Wood was awarded the gold medal of the Royal Philharmonic Society, the first English conductor to receive the honour.

Adrian Boult, who, at Henry Wood's recommendation, took over some of his responsibilities at Birmingham in 1923, always admired and respected Henry Wood.

Henry Wood encouraged him to abandon thoughts of a career as a pianist and to concentrate on conducting.

Henry Wood further showed his interest in the future of music by taking on the conductorship of the student orchestra at the Royal Academy of Music in 1923, rehearsing it twice a week, whenever possible, for the next twenty years.

In 1925 Henry Wood was invited to conduct four concerts for the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra at the Hollywood Bowl.

Such was their success, both artistic and financial, that Henry Wood was invited back, and conducted again the following year.

On his return to England from his first Hollywood trip, Henry Wood found himself in the middle of a feud between the chairman of Chappell's, William Boosey, and the BBC.

Henry Wood attempted to prevent anyone who wished to perform at the Queen's Hall from broadcasting for the BBC.

Henry Wood now had a daily rehearsal and extra rehearsals as needed.

Henry Wood was allowed extra players when large scores called for them, instead of having to rescore the work for the forces available.

In 1929, Henry Wood played a celebrated practical joke on musicologists and critics.

In that capacity he strove to ensure that Henry Wood was invited to conduct a fitting number of BBC symphony concerts outside the Prom season.

The following year, Henry Wood began planning for a grand concert to mark his fiftieth year as a conductor.

Rachmaninoff played the solo part in his Second Piano Concerto, and Vaughan Williams, at Henry Wood's request, composed a short choral work for the occasion: the Serenade to Music for orchestra and 16 soloists.

Henry Wood determined that the 1940 season would nevertheless go ahead.

In early 1943, Henry Wood's health deteriorated, and two days after the start of that year's season, he collapsed and was ordered to have a month in bed.

Henry Wood's recording career began in 1908, when he accompanied his wife Olga in "Farewell, forests" by Tchaikovsky, for the Gramophone and Typewriter Company, better known as His Master's Voice or HMV.

Henry Wood was wooed from Columbia by the young Decca company in 1935.

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Henry Wood's recordings did not remain in the catalogues long after his death.

Henry Wood received honorary doctorates from five English universities and was a fellow of both the Royal Academy of Music and the Royal College of Music .

Henry Wood's bust stands upstage centre in the Royal Albert Hall during the whole of each Prom season, decorated by a chaplet on the Last Night of the Proms.