Sir Adrian Boult / LPO ‎– Brahms: Serenade In A / Variations On A Theme Of Haydn

This is my post from this week's Tuesday Blog.

This week’s Vinyl’s Revenge looks at an Angel Red Label re-issue I purchased in the early 1980’s featuring Sir Adrian Boult and the music of Johannes Brahms.

Adrian Boult followed musical studies in England and at Leipzig, Germany, with early conducting work in London for the Royal Opera House and Sergei Diaghilev's ballet company.

When the British Broadcasting Corporation appointed him director of music in 1930, he established the BBC Symphony Orchestra and became its chief conductor. In 1950, after being forced into retirement by the BBC, Boult took on the chief conductorship of the LPO (retiring from that position in 1957). Although in the latter part of his career he worked with other orchestras, it was the LPO with which he was primarily associated, conducting it in concerts and recordings until 1978.

A modest man who disliked the limelight, Boult felt as comfortable in the recording studio as on the concert platform, making recordings throughout his career. His recording career stretched from the days of acoustic recording until the beginning of the digital era. Although widely recognized as a champion of British music, the exceptional breadth of Boult's repertoire has left some well-regarded recordings of works not immediately associated with him; in the core continental orchestral repertoire, Boult's recordings of the four symphonies of Brahms, and the Great C major Symphony of Schubert were celebrated in his lifetime and have remained in the catalogues during the years after his death.

Today’s share is contemporaneous to the Brahms cycle – a coupling of the Second Serenade and the Haydn Variations.

Happy Listening

Johannes BRAHMS (1833-1897)
Serenade for Orchestra No.2 in A Major, Op. 16
Variations on a Theme of Haydn in B-Flat Major (Orchestra setting, Op. 56a)

London Philharmonic Orchestra
Sir Adrian Boult, conducting

Angel Records ‎– RL-32091
Format: Vinyl, LP, Album, Stereo
Released: 1979

Discogs - https://www.discogs.com/Sir-Adrian-B...elease/8752973

Internet Archive -  https://archive.org/details/variationsonathemebyhaydnop.