| AdminHistory | Established by Robert Newman in 1895 as the permanent orchestra of Queen's Hall, London; the first series of Promenade Concerts was conducted by Henry Wood, with financial support from Dr George Cathcart; in 1897 the Saturday Afternoon Symphony Concerts and Sunday Afternoon Concerts were instituted; in 1904 Wood and Newman ended the deputy system, which permitted a player to send a substitute, and some 40 members of the orchestra resigned, going on to set up the London Symphony Orchestra; in 1913 Wood became the first conductor to admit women to the general ranks of a major British orchestra; for some years the orchestra was under the personal control of Robert Newman, but he became bankrupt in 1902 and the orchestra passed under the control of a syndicate headed by Sir Edgar Speyer, a banker of German origin; in 1915 Speyer was obliged to leave the country due to anti-German feeling; the orchestra passed into the hands of the music-publishing firm of Chappell & Co, which was already the Queen's Hall's leaseholder, and was renamed the New Queen's Hall Orchestra; Newman remained as manager throughout; in 1915 the orchestra began to make recordings; Newman's death in 1926 coincided with Chappell's decision to disband the orchestra for financial reasons and it played its last concert in 1927; however the BBC took over the Promenade Concerts and while the New Queen's Hall Orchestra ceased to exist as such, the personnel remained much the same, under the title 'Sir Henry J Wood and his Symphony Orchestra' until 1930, when the BBC Symphony Orchestra came into being; the title Queen's Hall Orchestra was revived in 1935 for the purposes of a film and of some recordings for the Decca Gramophone Company; and a reconstituted Queen's Hall Orchestra appeared for one season of Sunday concerts in 1936. |