Pre-war History
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The Queen's Hall, Langham Place, London, 1912.

In May 1903 Felix Weingartner conducted an all-Beethoven festival at the Queen’s Hall in London. The choral finale of the Ninth Symphony was entrusted to the Dulwich Philharmonic Society, whose conductor was Arthur Fagge. It was the success of this event, together with a desire to mount a performance in London of Elgar's The Dream of Gerontius which encouraged Fagge to found a new choir, the London Choral Society, to be based in central London.

An early programme of the London Choral Society contains this announcement of its aims and ideals:

“This Society is founded on the belief that the ability to develop and appreciate good choral singing is not confined to the North of England… Its avowed object of presenting unfamiliar and unjustly neglected works has always been kept steadily in view… Though it would be obviously impolitic to neglect occasional performances of works that are rightly established in public favour, yet no question of a too cautious expediency will hinder the preparation and presentation of those that have a right to be heard.”

In fact the Society's first concert, in October 1903, was a performance of Sullivan’s The Golden Legend (which the choir recorded for CD). The following February they gave the first London public performance of The Dream of Gerontius (saving only a performance in Westminster Cathedral, for which a choir had been imported from the Midlands) at the Queen’s Hall, at which the soloists were Marie Brema, John Coates and Ffrancon-Davies, and went on to perform all of Elgar’s major choral works, Other first performance mounted by the Society included Bantock’s Omar Khayyam in February 1910, and, in December the following year, Coleridge-Taylor’s A Tale of Old Japan. In April 1914 they gave the first performance in English of Parsifal.

Other works performed by the London Choral Society (all at the Queen's Hall) included a concert version of Saint-Saens' Samson and Delilah, Parry’s Pied Piper of Hamelin, Holbrooke’s The Bells, Walford Davies’ Everyman, Brahms’ Requiem, Berlioz' Faust, Balfour Gardiner’s News from Whydah, Wolf Ferrari’s Vita Nuova and Franck’s Hundredth Psalm.

The Society generally gave five concerts each season: in addition they were engaged for some of the Richter concerts and concerts of the Royal Philharmonic Society.

In 1912 and 1913 the LCS took part in an outstanding series of concerts with the New Symphony Orchestra (which had been founded in 1905), arranged by Balfour Gardiner, at which a large number of works were heard for the first time, including Bax’s Enchanted Summer, Grainger's Father and Daughter, Sir Eglamore and the Wordless, unaccompanied version of the Irish Tune from County Derry, and Holst’s The Cloud Messenger, which was conducted by the composer.

In May the following year the London Choral Society was engaged to take part in a Festival of British Music at the Queen’s Hall which was conducted by Emil Mlynarski and Thomas Beecham, with some works being conducted by Elgar and Arthur Fagge. The programmes consisted of the “best and most characteristic music” written and produced during the preceding ten years.


This information has been extracted from Queen's Hall, 1893-1941 by Robert Elkin.

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The Founder: Arthur Fagge

Towards the end of 1901, Edward Elgar was thoroughly perplexed. He had experienced three performances of his masterpiece, The Dream of Gerontius, even one that he conducted himself, but none had been wholly satisfying.

1901 saw less than ideal performances in Worcester on 9 May, the one Elgar conducted, and Buths’ first try in Dusseldorf on 19 December. Elgar still yearned to hear his masterpiece as it echoed and re-echoed within his mind.

Read the Dream of Gerontius story by Charles A Hooey at: http://www.musicweb-international.com/hooey/foster.htm

If you’re interested in researching the history of The London Choral Society, you may be interested in our Research Lab page.