Its first performance was as part of a concert given at the Royal Albert Hall by the National Chorus and Orchestra, which was broadcast live, on the evening of 17 March 1927.
In his autobiography, written under the pseudonym Jonah Barrington, Dalmaine said his appointment 'typifies one of the early weaknesses in BBC administration – the allocating of jobs to the lowest bidder'.
When Toscanini was first persuaded to come to England, he would not consider working with an amateur chorus, but eventually he accepted the challenge of a performance of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, Op.
In August 1942, in war-time London, an entirely fortuitous meeting near the Albert Memorial took place between the Chorus Master Leslie Woodgate and Honorary Secretary, and the restarting of the Society was discussed.
Dr R. S. Thatcher, the Assistant Director of Music at the BBC, became interested, and a meeting was called in December 1942, at which it was agreed that the chorus should not remain inactive, but that it should resume rehearsals.
Yuri Shaporin's On the Field of Kulikovo was another of the Russian works undertaken by the chorus in this period, on 7 November 1945, conducted by Albert Coates.
[11] To mark the 21st birthday of the BBC Choral Society in 1949, several special events took place, among them the first performance in London of a work by Leslie Woodgate, his oratorio Simon Peter.
The following year, Adrian Boult, who had conducted many of the performances in the 1930s and 1940s as the BBC's Director of Music and Chief Conductor, reached retiring age and was not asked to remain with the corporation.
Under Sargent the emphasis in the Society's repertoire shifted from adventurous new continental works to the 20th-century compositions of British composers: Herbert Howells's Hymnus Paradisi, Vaughan Williams's Sea Symphony, Delius's Sea Drift, Ireland's These things shall be, along with the classics of the choral repertory such as Haydn's Creation, Beethoven's Ninth and the Missa Solemnis, Handel's Messiah.
In 1958 the BBC Choral Society under Leslie Woodgate travelled to Aachen, where they gave an a cappella concert including Britten's Hymn to St Cecilia, and then went on to the Herkulesaal in Munich, where Handel's Messiah was performed.
Later that year Alan Rawsthorne's Carmen Vitale was a choral commission; and at the beginning of 1963 the Society faced one of its greatest challenges, a new work by Hans Werner Henze called Novae de Infinito Laudes.
A typical example of the extraordinary demands made on the chorus during the Proms each year was the succession of works performed during that season: in addition to the Penderecki, Mahler's Second Symphony, Walton's Belshazzar's Feast, Liszt's Faust Symphony, Berlioz's Grande Messe des Morts, Delius's Appalachia, Vaughan Williams's Serenade to Music, Schubert's E flat Mass and Beethoven's Ninth were all sung.
[4] In 1971, Colin Davis departed to take up the post of Music Director at Covent Garden, and was succeeded by the composer and conductor Pierre Boulez.
There was also a change of chorus master: in 1972 Peter Gellhorn was succeeded by John Poole, who directed several of the concerts in this period, including Dvořák's Te Deum and Bruckner's F minor Mass.
Stravinsky, Ravel, Debussy and Mahler were prominently featured, while of the romantics Berlioz, Schumann (the Scenes from Goethe's Faust) and Brahms (the Requiem) all appeared more than once.
During this period the Society sang under many guest conductors: the young Andrew Davis made his unexpected London debut with them in Janáček's Glagolitic Mass; Lorin Maazel returned to conduct some highly successful concerts; John Pritchard conducted several events including Rachmaninov's The Bells; and an increasingly large number of important occasions were undertaken by the Chorus Master, John Poole.
Works performed later that same season in 1979 included Thea Musgrave's Five Ages of Man, Michael Tippett's Vision of St Augustine, as well as performances in the Royal Albert Hall of the B Minor Mass on 10 January 1979, conducted by Brian Wright,[14] to mark the 50th Anniversary of the Chorus and Elgar's The Music Makers on 8 April 1979 to mark the 90th birthday of Sir Adrian Boult.
[15] From 1984 to 1988 the director of the BBC Symphony Chorus was Gareth Morrell, who served in that capacity for a wide range of concert and recording projects with conductors such as Sir Colin Davis, Claudio Abbado, Lorin Maazel and Christoph von Dohnányi.
[17] In his time, he prepared a huge repertoire for more than fifty maestri, including Bernard Haitink, Pierre Boulez, Simon Rattle and Roger Norrington, and composer-conductors such as Luciano Berio and John Adams.
[18] He particularly extended the range of the ensemble's large-scale a cappella choral repertoire, including Rachmaninov's Vespers (All-Night Vigil), Schoenberg's Friede auf Erden and Poulenc's Figure humaine; recorded works by Carl Rütti and Judith Bingham; and commissioned works by Richard Rodney Bennett, Mark-Anthony Turnage and Stephen Montague.
The grand finale of the traditional Blue Peter Christmas programme comprised the Chalk Farm Salvation Army Band and children from various schools, assisted by members of the BBC Symphony Chorus, marching "up the hill" and into the studio from the cold outside (lanterns in hand!)
the Herald Angels Sing" and "O Come, All Ye Faithful", were sung in alternate years, except in 1998 when there was a one-off experiment with "O Little Town of Bethlehem".
In 2010 the closing carol was reinstated, featuring for one final time the Chalk Farm Salvation Army Band and members of the BBC Symphony Chorus, the last Christmas show before the programme moved to MediaCityUK.
To publicise a concert at St Luke's Church, Chelsea, for The Knightsbridge Fund in aid of the victims of the Harrods bombing, Blue Peter invited the Chorus to the studio to sing the hymn "All people that on earth do dwell" (Old Hundredth) conducted by Brian Wright, accompanied by the Chalk Farm Salvation Army Band, who had been playing outside Harrods.
The Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh returned the favour by attending a special BBC Proms concert celebrating the 50th Anniversary of Her Majesty's Coronation on 30 July 2003.
[30] To commemorate the 40th anniversary of the original Monty Python television programme, the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Chorus conducted by John du Prez appeared alongside Eric Idle, Michael Palin, Terry Jones and Terry Gilliam in a remount of Not the Messiah (He's a Very Naughty Boy) at the Royal Albert Hall on 23 October 2009.
Leonard Slatkin conducted the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Chorus, with mezzo-soprano Jean Rigby, tenor John Aler and baritone Alan Opie.
Andrew Davis conducted the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Chorus, with mezzo-soprano Catherine Wyn-Rogers, tenor Philip Langridge and bass Alastair Miles.
[39] Premieres and commissions in recent years have included works by Peter Maxwell Davies, Dame Judith Weir, John Tavener, Hugh Wood[19] and Anthony Payne.
Recent commercial recordings include Brett Dean’s Vexations and Devotions under David Robertson; Szymanowski’s Stabat mater, Harnasie and Symphony No.