Adrian Boult - Recordings

Recordings

Boult was a prolific recording artist. Unlike many musicians, he felt at home in the recording studio and was happy working without an audience. His recording career stretched from the days of acoustic recording until the beginning of the digital era. His last recording of The Planets made in May 1978 was taped in experimental digital sound, although technical problems led EMI to release an analogue version.

Boult's recordings fall into three main periods. In the first, from 1920 to the end of the 1940s, he recorded almost exclusively for HMV. In the 1950s and early 1960s, he was less in demand by the major labels, and although he made a substantial number of discs for Decca, he recorded mostly for smaller labels, chiefly Pye Nixa. His last period, from the mid-1960s, sometimes referred to as his Indian Summer, was once again with HMV. With his regular collaborators the producer Christopher Bishop and the engineer Christopher Parker he made more than sixty recordings, re-recording much of his key repertoire in stereo. He also added many works to his discography that he had not recorded before.

Of the British composers, Boult extensively recorded and sometimes re-recorded major works by Elgar and Vaughan Williams. He recorded all eight then-existing symphonies by Vaughan Williams for Decca in the 1950s with the LPO, in the presence of the composer. The recording producer, John Culshaw, wrote that the composer "said very little during the sessions because he was totally in favour of Sir Adrian's approach to his music." Vaughan Williams was to have been present for the first recording of his Ninth symphony, for Everest Records in 1958, but he died the night before the session took place; Boult recorded a short introduction as a memorial tribute. All these recordings have been reissued on CD. In the 1960s Boult re-recorded the nine symphonies for EMI.

Other British composers who feature significantly in Boult's discography include Holst, Ireland, Parry, and Walton. Despite his reputation as a pioneer in Britain of the works of the Second Viennese School and other avant-garde composers, the record companies, unlike the BBC, remained cautious about recording him in this repertory, and only a single recording of a Berg piece represents this side of Boult's work. In the core continental orchestral repertoire, Boult's recordings of the four symphonies of Brahms, and the Great C major Symphony of Schubert were celebrated in his lifetime and have remained in the catalogues during the three decades after his death. Late in his recording career he recorded four discs of excerpts from Wagner's operas, which received great critical praise. The exceptional breadth of Boult's repertoire has left some well-regarded recordings of works not immediately associated with him, among which are versions of Franck's Symphony (recorded in 1959), Dvořák's Cello Concerto with Mstislav Rostropovich (1958), and a pioneering recording of Mahler's Third Symphony taped live in 1947.