Founded in 1893, the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra has worked with many famous composers, conductors and musicians including Elgar, Sibelius, Holst, Stravinsky, Vaughan Williams and Thomas Beecham; and more recently with Michael Tippett, John Tavener and Peter Maxwell Davies. Principal conductors since the founder Sir Dan Godfrey have included Charles Groves, Constantin Silvestri, Andrew Litton and Marin Alsop, followed in 2009 by the dynamic young Ukrainian, Kirill Karabits. The BSO has toured worldwide, performing at Carnegie Hall, New York, the Amsterdam Concertgebouw, Vienna Musikverein, and Berlin Philharmonie, as well as regular British appearances at the Royal Festival Hall and Royal Albert Hall in London, the Symphony Hall in Birmingham and the Bridgewater Hall in Manchester.
The BSO is known internationally through over three hundred recordings, including Anthony Payne's sketches for Elgar's Symphony No. 3 (8.554719) with Paul Daniel, the symphonies of Vaughan Williams with the former Chief Guest Conductor Kees Bakels and Paul Daniel, and recordings of works by Philip Glass, Leonard Bernstein, and John Adams under Marin Alsop for Naxos (8.559031), this last chosen as Editor's Choice in the November 2004 issue of Gramophone Magazine. The Naxos BSO/Serebrier Mussorgsky recording (8.557645) reached No. 2 in the top twenty Classical Chart. It continues to release numerous CDs each year on Naxos. Recent critically acclaimed recordings have included works by Bernstein, Bartók, Sibelius, Glass, Adams and Elgar, and three discs featuring arrangements of Mussorgsky, Bach and Wagner by Stokowski were nominated for GRAMMY awards in 2004, 2005 and 2006.
In addition to its recording and international touring commitments, the BSO is dedicated to providing orchestral music across the South and West of Britain, enhanced by a program of educational and community projects, and makes regular appearances in major festivals and concert-halls throughout the United Kingdom.
Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra (BSO)
BSO with conductor Marin Alsop
Photos courtesy of Chris Zuidyk
