He built it into a fine ensemble, attracting such artists as Fritz Kreisler, Nellie Melba, Ferruccio Busoni, Ignacy Paderewski and Anna Pavlova.
In October 1914, at the first Yorkshire production of the 1913 William Russell film Tannhauser Clifford and Farrar arranged the accompanying music.
[10] The Orchestra's quality attracted other conductors, notably Ralph Vaughan Williams, who gave the second performance of his A London Symphony with them in August 1914.
[12] In October 1916, Clifford conducted the Birmingham Symphony Orchestra at the Town Hall, in a programme including Friedemann's Slavonic Rhapsody and John Foulds's Keltic Suite, which were said to have been 'presented with fine precision and due observation of gradation of light and shade.
Julian Clifford recommended to him to study composition with Ernest Farrar, who was a friend of Frank Bridge, Clive Carey and Vaughan Williams.
[13] Farrar died in 1918, and at a concert dedicated to his memory, at Harrogate 17 September 1919, Clifford conducted the first performance of his own work, the tone-poem 'Lights Out'.
[14] Other compositions include a Piano Concerto in E minor, a Ballade in D for orchestra, a Suite de Concert, and the song-cycle A Dream of Flowers.
[23] During the War there are notices of Clifford conducting at the Glasgow Alhambra Theatre, for instance in May 1941 an international ballet tour with Mona Inglesby and Harold Turner,[24] and there in November 1943 conducting two concerts by Anne Ziegler and Webster Booth, the first with pianist Frederic Lamond and the second with Mark Hambourg, both with the National Philharmonic Orchestra.
[26] He is well represented conducting Carousel at the New Theatre, Oxford, in April 1953 in a caricature pencil sketch by Gilbert Sommerlad in the collections of the Victoria and Albert Museum.