78 Facts About Malcolm Sargent

Sir Harold Malcolm Watts Sargent was an English conductor, organist and composer widely regarded as Britain's leading conductor of choral works.

Malcolm Sargent was held in high esteem by choirs and instrumental soloists, but because of his high standards and a statement that he made in a 1936 interview disputing musicians' rights to tenure, his relationship with orchestral players was often uneasy.

At the outbreak of the Second World War, Malcolm Sargent turned down an offer of a musical directorship in Australia and returned to Britain to bring music to as many people as possible as his contribution to national morale.

Malcolm Sargent's fame extended beyond the concert hall: to the British public, he was a familiar broadcaster in BBC radio discussion programmes, and generations of Gilbert and Sullivan devotees have known his recordings of the most popular Savoy Operas.

Malcolm Sargent toured widely throughout the world and was noted for his skill as a conductor, his championship of British composers, and his debonair appearance, which won him the nickname "Flash Harry".

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Malcolm Sargent's parents lived in Stamford, Lincolnshire, but he was born in Ashford, in Kent while his mother was staying with a family friend.

The young Malcolm Sargent won a scholarship to Stamford School, where he was a pupil from 1907 to 1912.

Malcolm Sargent studied piano and organ, and joined the local amateur operatic society, making his stage debut in The Mikado aged 13 and conducting for the first time the following year when the regular conductor was unavailable.

On leaving school, Malcolm Sargent was articled to Haydn Keeton, organist of Peterborough Cathedral, and was one of the last musicians to be trained in that traditional way.

Malcolm Sargent worked first as an organist at St Mary's Church, Melton Mowbray, Leicestershire, from 1914 to 1924, except for eight months in 1918 when he served as a private in the Durham Light Infantry during the First World War.

Malcolm Sargent was chosen for the organist post over more than 150 other applicants.

At the age of 24 Malcolm Sargent became England's youngest Doctor of Music, with a degree from Durham.

Malcolm Sargent's break came when Sir Henry Wood visited the De Montfort Hall, Leicester, early in 1921 with the Queen's Hall orchestra.

Malcolm Sargent did so – a tone poem, An Impression on a Windy Day, a seven-minute orchestral allegro impetuoso.

Malcolm Sargent completed it too late for Wood to have enough time to learn it, and Wood called on him to conduct the first performance.

Malcolm Sargent was invited to conduct his Impression again in the 1923 season, but it was as a conductor that he made the greater impact.

Malcolm Sargent founded the amateur Leicester Symphony Orchestra in 1922, which he continued to conduct until 1939.

In 1926 Malcolm Sargent began an association with the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company that lasted, on and off, for the rest of his life.

Malcolm Sargent was criticised by The Times for allegedly adding "gags" to the Gilbert and Sullivan scores, although the writer praised the crispness of the ensemble, the "musicalness" of the performance and the beauty of the overture.

Rupert D'Oyly Carte wrote to the paper stating that Malcolm Sargent had worked from Arthur Sullivan's manuscript scores and had merely brought out the "details of the orchestration" exactly as Sullivan had written them.

In 1928 Malcolm Sargent was appointed conductor of the Royal Choral Society; he retained this post for four decades until his death.

Malcolm Sargent joked that his career was based on "the two M's – Messiah and Mikado".

The chorus for the last of these found Walton's music difficult, but Malcolm Sargent engaged them with it, telling them they were helping to make musical history, and reminding them that Berlioz's Requiem and Elgar's The Dream of Gerontius had been considered impossible at first.

Malcolm Sargent drew from them and the LSO what The Times described as "a performance of unflagging energy and amazing volume of tone under Dr Malcolm Sargent",.

Malcolm Sargent did not conduct opera there again until 1954, with Walton's Troilus and Cressida, although he did conduct the incidental music for a dramatisation of The Pilgrim's Progress given at the Royal Opera House in 1948.

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Malcolm Sargent was on the point of accepting a permanent appointment with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation when, at the outbreak of the Second World War, he felt it his duty to return to his country, resisting strong pressure from the Australian media for him to stay.

Malcolm Sargent helped boost public morale during the war by extensive concert tours around the country conducting for nominal fees.

Malcolm Sargent stopped the orchestra, reassured the audience that they were safer inside the hall than fleeing outside, and resumed conducting.

Malcolm Sargent later said that no orchestra had ever played so well and that no audience in his experience had ever listened so intently.

In four concerts Malcolm Sargent chose to present all English music, with the exception of Sibelius's Symphony No 1 and Dvorak's Symphony No 7.

Menuhin judged Malcolm Sargent's conducting of the latter "the next best to Elgar in this work".

Malcolm Sargent was made a Knight Bachelor in the 1947 Birthday Honours for services to music.

Malcolm Sargent performed in numerous English-speaking countries during the post-war years and continued to promote British composers, conducting the premieres of Walton's opera, Troilus and Cressida, and Vaughan Williams's Symphony No 9 .

Malcolm Sargent was a dominant figure at the Proms in the post-war era.

Malcolm Sargent was chief conductor of the Proms from 1947 until his death in 1967, taking part in 514 concerts.

Malcolm Sargent was noted for his witty addresses in which he good-naturedly chided the noisy promenaders.

Those making their Prom debuts in the Malcolm Sargent years included Carlo Maria Giulini, Georg Solti, Leopold Stokowski, Rudolf Kempe, Pierre Boulez and Bernard Haitink.

Malcolm Sargent was chief conductor of the BBC Symphony Orchestra from 1950 to 1957, succeeding Boult.

Malcolm Sargent was not the BBC's first choice, but John Barbirolli and Rafael Kubelik turned the post down, and it went to Sargent, despite reservations about his commitment.

Malcolm Sargent rapidly became equally unpopular with the BBC music department, ignoring its agenda and pursuing his own.

Malcolm Sargent was given the title of "Chief Guest Conductor" and he remained Conductor-in-Chief of the Proms.

In 1952 Malcolm Sargent conducted in all the above-mentioned cities and in Lima.

Malcolm Sargent's final conducting appearances were on 6 and 8 July 1967, with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra at the Ravinia Festival.

Malcolm Sargent underwent surgery in July 1967 for pancreatic cancer and made a valedictory appearance at the end of the Last Night of the Proms in September that year, handing over the baton to his successor, Colin Davis.

Malcolm Sargent was buried in Stamford cemetery alongside members of his family.

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Malcolm Sargent was too interested in other things, and not single-minded enough about music.

Malcolm Sargent has an incredible speed of mind, and it has always been a great joy, as well as a rare professional experience, to work with him.

Composers whose works Malcolm Sargent regularly conducted included, from the eighteenth century, Bach, Handel, Gluck, Mozart and Haydn; and from the nineteenth century, Beethoven, Berlioz, Schubert, Schumann, Mendelssohn, Brahms, Wagner, Tchaikovsky, Smetana, Sullivan and Dvorak.

Malcolm Sargent's was the younger daughter of Frederick William Horne – a prosperous miller, farmer, coal merchant and carter – and the niece of Evangeline Astley Cooper of Hambleton Hall in Rutland, where she lived in the early 1920s.

Malcolm Sargent was a guest there in the same period, and his name occurs alongside hers in local press reports of social gatherings such as hunt balls.

Malcolm Sargent was much affected by his daughter's death, and his recording of Elgar's The Dream of Gerontius in 1945 was an expression of his grief.

Before, during and after his marriage, Malcolm Sargent was a continual womaniser, which he did not deny.

Away from music, Malcolm Sargent was elected a member of The Literary Society, a dining club founded in 1807 by William Wordsworth and others.

Malcolm Sargent was a member of the Beefsteak Club, for which his proposer was Sir Edward Elgar, the Garrick, and the long-established and aristocratic White's and Pratt's clubs.

Yet despite his philandering and ambition, Malcolm Sargent was a deeply religious man all his life and was comforted on his deathbed by visits from the Anglican Archbishop of York, Donald Coggan and the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Westminster, Cardinal Heenan.

Malcolm Sargent received telephone calls from Queen Elizabeth and Prince Charles, and had a reconciliation with his son, Peter, from whom he had been estranged.

Malcolm Sargent's devoted fans, the Promenaders, used the nickname in an approving sense, and shortened it to "Flash", though Malcolm Sargent was not especially fond of the sobriquet, even thus modified.

Beecham and Malcolm Sargent were allies from the early days of the London Philharmonic to Beecham's final months when they were planning joint concerts.

When Malcolm Sargent was incapacitated by tuberculosis in 1933, Beecham conducted a performance of Messiah at the Albert Hall to raise money to support his younger colleague.

Malcolm Sargent was awarded the highest honour of the Royal Philharmonic Society, its Gold Medal, in 1959.

At Albert Hall Mansions, next to the Albert Hall, where Malcolm Sargent lived, there is a blue plaque placed in his memory.

Subsequently, in the recording studio, Malcolm Sargent was most in demand to record English music, choral works and concertos.

Malcolm Sargent recorded prolifically and worked with many orchestras, but made the most recordings with the BBC Symphony Orchestra, the London Symphony Orchestra, the New Symphony Orchestra of London, the Philharmonia Orchestra and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra .

Malcolm Sargent conducted Gilbert and Sullivan recordings in four different decades.

Later, in 1965, with Jacqueline du Pre, in her debut recording, Malcolm Sargent recorded Delius's Cello Concerto, coupled with the Songs of Farewell .

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Malcolm Sargent was the conductor for Heifetz's 1949 recording of Elgar's Violin Concerto and Paul Tortelier's first recording of the Cello Concerto in 1954.

Malcolm Sargent made two recordings of Holst's The Planets: a monaural version with the LSO for Decca and a stereo version with the BBC for EMI .

Malcolm Sargent recorded shorter Holst pieces: The Perfect Fool ballet music and the Beni Mora suite.

In 1958 Malcolm Sargent recorded Walton's Belshazzar's Feast, one of his specialities, which was reissued on CD in 1990 and again in 2004.

Malcolm Sargent made a stereo recording of Walton's First Symphony in the presence of the composer, but Walton privately preferred Andre Previn's recording, issued in January 1967, the same month as Sargent's.

Malcolm Sargent recorded Vaughan Williams's overture The Wasps with the LSO.

In 1963, Malcolm Sargent recorded Gay's The Beggar's Opera, one of his few operas on record other than Gilbert and Sullivan.

Malcolm Sargent conducted the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic and the Huddersfield Choral Society in recordings of Handel's Israel in Egypt and Mendelssohn's Elijah in 1947, both of which have been reissued on CD.

Malcolm Sargent was continually in demand as a conductor for concertos.

Malcolm Sargent was an enthusiastic champion of Sibelius's music, even recording it with the Vienna Philharmonic when it was not part of their repertory.

Malcolm Sargent recorded a wide variety of other European composers, including Bach's Sinfonia from the Easter Oratorio, with Goossens and the RLPO; Chopin's Les Sylphides ballet suite ; Grieg's Lyric Suite ; Haydn's Symphony No 98 ; Rachmaninoff's Paganini Rhapsody among others; and Wagner's "Prelude" from Das Rheingold and "Ride of the Valkyries" from Die Walkure.

Malcolm Sargent recorded Smetana's complete Ma vlast cycle with the RPO in 1964.

Malcolm Sargent narrated and conducted Instruments of the Orchestra, an educational film produced by the British government.