[4] While travelling by train to play under Wood at a music festival in the north of England in May 1904, soon after Newman's announcement, some of his leading players discussed the situation and agreed to try to form their own orchestra.

[4] Busby explained the scheme: a new ensemble, the London Symphony Orchestra,[n 1] to be run on co-operative lines, "something akin to a Musical Republic",[6] with a constitution that gave the organisation independence.

[4] This worked well in good years, but any poorly-patronised series left members out of pocket, and reliant on the LSO's engagements to play for provincial choral societies and other managements.

[7] The proposal was approved unanimously, and a management committee was elected, comprising the four original movers and Alfred Hobday (viola) and E F (Fred) James (bassoon).

"[12] The following year the LSO played outside Britain for the first time, giving concerts in Paris, conducted by Edouard Colonne, Sir Charles Stanford and André Messager.

Richard Morrison, in his centenary study of the LSO, writes of "stodgy programmes of insipid Cowen, worthy Stanford, dull Parry and mediocre Mackenzie";[n 3] they put the Parisian public off to a considerable degree, and the players ended up out of pocket.

[30] Among the guests were Elgar, Beecham, Otto Klemperer, Bruno Walter, Wilhelm Furtwängler and Serge Koussevitzky; soloists in the 1920s included Sergei Rachmaninoff, Artur Schnabel and the young Yehudi Menuhin.

[42] Critics including Neville Cardus recognised the continued improvement in the LSO's playing: "On this evening's hearing the London Symphony Orchestra is likely, after all, to give its two rivals a gallant run.

[48] By 1939 the orchestra's board was planning an ambitious programme for 1940, with guests including Bruno Walter, Leopold Stokowski, Erich Kleiber and George Szell.

[52] The Carnegie Trust, with the support of the British government, contracted the LSO to tour Britain, taking live music to towns where symphony concerts were hitherto unknown.

[59] His chosen repertoire was good for the box office: cycles of Beethoven symphonies and concertos (the latter featuring Wilhelm Kempff in one season and Claudio Arrau in another) helped restore the orchestra's finances as well as its musical standards.

[66] The LSO's board, which reflected the majority opinion of the players, refused to accommodate the principals, most of whom resigned en masse, to form the Sinfonia of London, a session ensemble that flourished from the mid-1950s to the early 1960s, and then faded away.

[68] To replace the departing principals the LSO recruited rising young players including Hugh Maguire, Neville Marriner and Simon Streatfeild in the string sections, Gervase de Peyer and William Waterhouse in the woodwinds, and Barry Tuckwell and Denis Wick in the brass.

"[78] They also pioneered formal sponsorship by commercial firms: the orchestra's "Peter Stuyvesant" concerts, underwritten by the tobacco company of that name, were given in London, Guildford, Bournemouth, Manchester and Swansea.

[80] In 1964, the LSO undertook its first world tour, taking in Israel, Turkey, Iran, India, Hong Kong, Korea, Japan and the United States.

Previn would talk informally direct to camera and then turn and conduct the LSO, whose members were dressed in casual sweaters or shirts rather than formal evening clothes.

[93] In the early 1970s the LSO recorded two firsts for a British orchestra, appearing at the Salzburg Festival, conducted by Previn, Seiji Ozawa and Karl Böhm, in 1973, and playing at the Hollywood Bowl the following year.

[96] In a 1988 study of the LSO in Gramophone magazine James Jolly wrote that Abbado was in many ways the antithesis of Previn in terms of style and repertoire, bringing to the orchestra a particular authority in the Austro-German classics as well as a commitment to the avant-garde.

[98] Abbado had considerable international prestige, but this too had its downside for the LSO: he frequently made his major recordings with the Boston or Chicago Symphony Orchestras or the Vienna Philharmonic.

One of the LSO's principals commented, "Although we were sweating our guts playing those vast Mahler symphonies for ... Abbado, he would go and record them with other orchestras, which made us feel like second, maybe even third choice".

[100] The Times commented that the LSO "were tempted by their own need for challenge (and a siren chorus of critics) to begin a series of more modern and adventurous music: six nights a week of Tippett, Berlioz, Webern, Stockhausen designed to draw in a new public.

[103] During 1988 the orchestra adopted an education policy which included the establishment of "LSO Discovery", offering "people of all ages, from babies through music students to adults, an opportunity to get involved in music-making".

[103] Gillison secured increased funding from the Arts Council, the City of London Corporation and commercial sponsors, enabling the orchestra to set up a system of joint principals, attracting top musicians who could play in the LSO without having to give up their solo or chamber careers.

[109] Such was the press and public reaction that she was obliged to seek a vote of confidence from the LSO and RSC; failing to gain it, she resigned, and was succeeded by John Tusa, whom Morrison calls "steeped in culture."

[113] In March 2015, the LSO simultaneously announced the departure of Gergiev as principal conductor at the end of 2015, and the appointment of Sir Simon Rattle as its music director from September 2017, with an initial contract of five years.

[119][120][121] In a 1988 Gramophone article James Jolly said of it: Some would claim ... that it is the most American of our orchestras, thinking no doubt of the Previn legacy, Bernstein's Presidency and Tilson Thomas's appointment.

[127] Others, including Previn and the veteran principal trumpet Maurice Murphy, felt that although the technical standard of playing had improved, the diminution of the orchestra's machismo was a matter for regret.

[62] Of the later 1960s Jolly writes, "Istvan Kertész's three-year Principal Conductorship has left a treasure trove of memorable and extraordinarily resilient recordings – the Dvořák symphonies are still competitive ... and his classic disc of Bartók's Duke Bluebeard's Castle admirably demonstrates what a superb ensemble the LSO were under his baton.

During the 1920s the orchestra played scores arranged and conducted by Eugene Goossens to accompany screenings of The Three Musketeers (1922), The Nibelungs (1924), The Constant Nymph (1927) and The Life of Beethoven (1929).

Rider adds, "Mathieson's documentary, with its close-ups of the musicians and their instruments, beautifully captures the vibrancy and texture of the Orchestra amidst the optimism of the post-Second World War era.