Archive Item of the Month – August 2021
Henry Wood (1869-1944) and the Promenade Concerts.
Programme for Saturday 5 October 1929, Queen’s Hall, London, thirty-fifth season of Promenade Concerts. Donated, with a letter from Wood of 5 October 1938, by Rowland Dyson (RSM Member 00760) in July 1989.
The British musical summertime would not be complete without the excitement and scope of the BBC Proms. It draws together performers from across the world for programmes and performances of music. It is a festival experience with a wonderful sense of comradeship in the audience as well as with the performers.
This programme was the final of the forty-nine concerts in that particular season. The last night of the “Proms” includes the Fantasia on British Sea Songs, a medley arranged by Henry Wood and first performed in 1905.
Caricature of Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958) by W. Barton Wilkinson; ca 1920. Donated by John Mundy (1886-1971, Member 00383) in August 1970.
In 1938, Henry Wood was celebrating the jubilee of the fiftieth anniversary of his first concert. On 5 October the concert, to mark this occasion, he conducted the first performance of Ralph Vaughan Williams’s Serenade to Music, especially written for the conductor on this occasion. The work was composed for solo singers chosen by Wood and Vaughan Williams, and the orchestra included players from three orchestras – London Symphony Orchestra, BBC Symphony Orchestra and London Philharmonic Orchestra. The occasion obviously moved Sir Henry judging by the letter he wrote to the performers immediately after the event.
Transcription of letter:
I cannot allow this moment to pass without acknowledging to you personally my deep gratitude for your services so freely given to-night.
On such an occasion as this, you will I am sure appreciate how difficult it is to properly express my feelings.
To me, it will ever remain the most memorable event of my life. I am so deeply touched by the way in which my fellow musicians have so readily co-operated to mark this occasion.
I thank you most sincerely
Henry J. Wood