page_title: Henry Wood
section_title: Premieres
hierarchical_section_title: Henry Wood / Premieres
caption_attribution_description: Caricature of Sir Henry Joseph Wood (1869-1944). Caption read "Queen's Hall".
context_page_description: Sir Henry Joseph Wood CH was an English conductor best known for his association with London's annual series of promenade concerts, known as the Proms. He conducted them for nearly half a century, introducing hundreds of new works to British audiences. After his death, the concerts were officially renamed in his honour as the "Henry Wood Promenade Concerts", although they continued to be generally referred to as "the Proms".
  Born in modest circumstances to parents who encouraged his musical talent, Wood started his career as an organist. During his studies at the Royal Academy of Music, he came under the influence of the voice teacher Manuel Garcia and became his accompanist. After similar work for Richard D'Oyly Carte's opera companies on the works of Arthur Sullivan and others, Wood became the conductor of a small operatic touring company. He was soon engaged by the larger Carl Rosa Opera Company. One notable event in his operatic career was conducting the British premiere of Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin in 1892.
  From the mid-1890s until his death, Wood focused on concert conducting.
context_section_description: In Jacobs's 1994 biography, the list of premieres conducted by Wood extends to 18 pages. His world premieres included Frank Bridge's The Sea; Britten's Piano Concerto; Delius's A Song Before Sunrise, A Song of Summer, and Idyll; Elgar's The Wand of Youth Suite No. 1, Sospiri and the 4th and 5th Pomp and Circumstance Marches; and Vaughan Williams's Norfolk Rhapsody No. 1, Flos Campi and Serenade to Music.
  Wood's UK premieres included Bartók's Dance Suite; Chabrier's Joyeuse marche; Copland's Billy the Kid; Debussy's Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune and Ibéria; Hindemith's Kammermusik 2 and 5; Janáček's Sinfonietta, Taras Bulba and Glagolitic Mass; Kodály's Dances from Galanta; Mahler's Symphonies Nos. 4, 7 and 8, and Das Lied von der Erde; Prokofiev's Piano Concerto No. 1 and Violin Concerto No. 2; Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No 1; Ravel's Ma mère l'oye, Rapsodie espagnole, La valse and Piano Concerto in D; Rimsky-Korsakov's Capriccio Espagnol, Scheherazade, and Symphony No. 2; Saint-Saëns's The Carnival of the Animals; Schumann's Konzertstück for four horns and orchestra; Shostakovich's Piano Concerto No. 1 and Symphonies Nos. 7 and 8; Sibelius's Symphonies Nos. 1, 6 and 7, Violin Concerto, Karelia Suite, and Tapiola; Richard Strauss's Symphonia Domestica; Stravinsky's The Firebird (suite); Tchaikovsky's Manfred Symphony and Nutcracker Suite; and Webern's Passacaglia.
caption: Wood caricatured by Spy for Vanity Fair, 1907
exif: {}