During and after the Second World War, Boult strove to maintain standards, but the senior management of the post-war BBC did not allocate the orchestra the resources to meet competition from new and well-funded rivals.

[2] The augmented "Wireless Orchestra" conducted by Sir Landon Ronald made its first commercial recording in July 1924 by the acoustical process for His Master's Voice, Schubert's Rosamunde overture, which was issued in the following October.

The following year, Pitt, by now working full-time for the BBC, as its director of music, augmented the ensemble to form the "Wireless Symphony Orchestra" for a new series of concerts broadcast from Covent Garden, conducted by Bruno Walter, Ernest Ansermet and Pierre Monteux;[6] at this time Reith also allowed Pitt and the Wireless Symphony Orchestra to contract with the Columbia Graphophone Company to make a substantial series of electrically recorded discs, most of which were recorded in the Methodist Central Hall Westminster which the BBC had previously used for concerts.

In 1927 the BBC and Covent Garden collaborated in a series of public concerts with an orchestra of 150 players under conductors including Richard Strauss and Siegfried Wagner.

A historian of the Queen's Hall, Robert Elkin, writes, "At this period the standard of orchestral playing in London was distinctly low, and the well-drilled efficiency of the Berliners under their dynamic conductor came as something of a revelation.

The chief music critic of The Times, Frank Howes, later commented, "the British public ... was electrified when it heard the disciplined precision of the Berlin Philharmonic...

The latter aimed at setting up a first-rate ensemble for opera and concert performances and, though no admirer of broadcasting, he was willing to negotiate with the BBC if this gave him what he sought.

The critic Richard Morrison writes: Reith's BBC of the 1920s was ... imbued with an almost religious zeal for "enlightening" the public through the magical medium of the wireless.

[13] Landon Ronald brought Reith and Beecham together in April 1928; negotiations and preliminary arrangements continued for more than 18 months until it became clear that the corporation and the conductor had irreconcilable priorities for the proposed new ensemble.

[14] Beecham withdrew and, as described by Nicholas Kenyon: With the collapse of the Beecham scheme, the way was open for the BBC's music department to design an orchestral scheme truly suited to broadcasting needs – a plan for a 114-piece orchestra that could split into four different smaller groups, which had been devised in the autumn of 1929 by Edward Clark and Julian Herbage – and to place that orchestra's fortunes under the direction of the man who was to guide it with the utmost distinction for the next 20 years, the BBC's new director of music, Adrian Boult.

[14]By the time Adrian Boult succeeded Pitt as director of music for the BBC, the violinist Albert Sammons and the violist Lionel Tertis had scouted for new talent around the country on behalf of the corporation.

Among those who joined were Aubrey Brain, Arthur Catterall, Eugene Cruft, Sidonie Goossens, Lauri Kennedy and Frederick Thurston.

that it intended to get together a first-class orchestra was not an idle one", spoke of "exhilaration at the playing", and called another concert later in the season "an occasion for national pride".

[40] With Reith long gone from the post of director-general, Boult found that the top management of the BBC was less concerned for the status of its Symphony Orchestra.

The new director-general, Sir William Haley, was unwilling to approve the funding needed to keep the orchestra competitive with new rivals – Walter Legge's Philharmonia and Beecham's Royal Philharmonic.

However, his regular programming of such works did nothing to lift the spirits of the BBC SO: orchestral musicians regarded playing the instrumental accompaniment for large choirs as drudgery.

"[52] In addition to working under a conductor it disliked, the BBC SO found its role as a pioneer of progressive music gone, and its performances of the standard classics criticised as under-rehearsed (particularly during Proms seasons) compared with those given by Legge's Philharmonia and others.

[53] The manager of the Royal Festival Hall, Ernest Bean, spoke of "an inherited aura of mediocrity about BBC concerts which keeps people away".

[55] The music critic Tom Sutcliffe later wrote that Doráti and his successors, Colin Davis (1967–71), Pierre Boulez (1971–75) and Gennady Rozhdestvensky (1978–81) had been partly successful in improving playing standards, but had not brought the orchestra up to its original level of distinction.

[57] The following season, he was able to engage joint principals for the wind section, including Jack Brymer and Terence MacDonagh, formerly members of Beecham's celebrated "Royal Family" in the RPO.

[58] The problem remained that recruiting rank-and-file string players was difficult: although the BBC offered secure employment and a pension, it did not pay as well as its London rivals.

World or UK premieres in the 1970s included works by Elliott Carter, György Ligeti, Witold Lutosławski, Olivier Messiaen, Luigi Nono, Arvo Pärt and Karlheinz Stockhausen.

[65] Although Glock restored the orchestra's reputation as Britain's leading modern music ensemble, the balance of programming affected the players' capacity in the mainstream repertoire.

[69] He was at the helm for what John Allison in The Times called "the valuable Barbican weekends that each January investigate another major but not fully understood 20th-century composer.

[72] The classical repertory was regarded as one of Bělohlávek's strengths, but he had no reputation for conducting new works, which remained a core part of the orchestra's remit.

On the basis of this concert, in February 2012, Oramo was named the orchestra's 13th Chief Conductor, with an initial contract of 3 years, effective with the First Night of the 2013 Proms season.

[81][non-primary source needed] In October 2020, the BBC SO announced a further extension of Oramo's contract as chief conductor through September 2023, the scheduled conclusion of the 2023 Proms season.

Under Boult the BBC Symphony Orchestra recorded a wide range of music from Bach to Mozart and Beethoven, Brahms, Wagner and Elgar.

Under Colin Davis it made its first opera sets: Mozart's Idomeneo and The Marriage of Figaro, and Berlioz's Benvenuto Cellini, as well as works by Beethoven and Tippett.

[94] With guest conductors, the BBC SO has recorded Elgar and Vaughan Williams under the composers, Beethoven under Toscanini, Bruno Walter and Barbirolli, and Sibelius under Beecham and Koussevitsky.