page_title: Malcolm Sargent
section_title: English music
hierarchical_section_title: Malcolm Sargent / Recordings / English music
context_page_description: Sir Harold Malcolm Watts Sargent was an English conductor, organist and composer widely regarded as Britain's leading conductor of choral works. The musical ensembles with which he was associated included the Ballets Russes, the Huddersfield Choral Society, the Royal Choral Society, the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company, and the London Philharmonic, Hallé, Liverpool Philharmonic, BBC Symphony and Royal Philharmonic orchestras. Sargent was held in high esteem by choirs and instrumental soloists, but because of his high standards and a statement that he made in a 1936 interview disputing musicians' rights to tenure, his relationship with orchestral players was often uneasy. Despite this, he was co-founder of the London Philharmonic, was the first conductor of the Liverpool Philharmonic as a full-time ensemble, and played an important part in saving the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra from disbandment in the 1960s.
  As chief conductor of London's internationally famous summer music festival the Proms from 1948 to 1967, Sargent was one of the best-known English conductors.
context_section_description: Sargent conducted Gilbert and Sullivan recordings in four different decades. His early recordings with the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company for HMV included The Yeomen of the Guard (1928), The Pirates of Penzance (1929), Iolanthe (1930), H.M.S. Pinafore (1930), Patience (1930), Yeomen (excerpts 1931), Pirates (excerpts 1931), The Gondoliers (excerpts 1931), Ruddigore (1932) and Princess Ida (1932). More than 30 years later, for Decca, he recorded Yeomen (1964) and Princess Ida (1965) with the D'Oyly Carte company. In addition, between 1957 and 1963, Sargent recorded nine of the Gilbert and Sullivan operas for EMI, with the Glyndebourne Festival Chorus and soloists from the world of oratorio and grand opera. These were Trial by Jury, Pinafore, Pirates, Patience, Iolanthe, The Mikado, Ruddigore, Yeomen and The Gondoliers. According to the Gilbert and Sullivan scholar Marc Shepherd, "The [Glyndebourne] recordings' musical excellence is undisputed, but many listeners object to Sargent's lugubrious tempi and the singers' lack of feeling for the G&S idiom." Sargent used an orchestra of thirty-seven players at the Savoy Theatre (the same number as Sullivan), but sometimes added a few more when recording.
  During the Second World War, Sargent and the Liverpool Philharmonic accompanied Albert Sammons, the dedicatee, in his 1944 recording of the Delius Violin Concerto. Later, in 1965, with Jacqueline du Pré, in her début recording, Sargent recorded Delius's Cello Concerto, coupled with the Songs of Farewell (1965). At the end of the war, Sargent turned to recording Elgar. A recording regularly chosen over all others in comparative surveys is the first of Sargent's two versions of Elgar's The Dream of Gerontius with Heddle Nash as tenor and the familiar Sargent pairing of the Huddersfield Choral Society and the Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, recorded in 1945. Sargent was also the conductor for Heifetz's 1949 recording of Elgar's Violin Concerto and Paul Tortelier's first recording of the Cello Concerto in 1954. He also recorded Elgar's Wand of Youth Suite No. 2, with the BBC; the Pomp and Circumstance Marches 1 and 4 with the LSO; and the Enigma Variations with the Philharmonia. Sargent made two recordings of Holst's The Planets: a monaural version with the LSO for Decca (1950) and a stereo version with the BBC for EMI (1960). He also recorded shorter Holst pieces: The Perfect Fool ballet music and the Beni Mora suite.
  In 1958 Sargent recorded Walton's Belshazzar's Feast, one of his specialities, which was reissued on CD in 1990 and again in 2004. Sargent recorded Walton's Façade Suites in 1961. With the LSO, Sargent recorded Walton's Orb and Sceptre March. He also made a stereo recording of Walton's First Symphony in the presence of the composer, but Walton privately preferred André Previn's recording, issued in January 1967, the same month as Sargent's. Of Vaughan Williams's shorter pieces, Sargent recorded, with the BBC in 1960, the Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis (which he also recorded with the Philharmonia), and with the LSO, Serenade to Music (1957; choral version) and Toward the Unknown Region. He also recorded Vaughan Williams's overture The Wasps with the LSO.
   Although the heyday of live performances of Sargent's Coleridge-Taylor signature piece at the Albert Hall was by then long gone, Sargent, the Royal Choral Society and the Philharmonia made a stereo recording in 1962 of Hiawatha's Wedding Feast, which has been reissued on CD. In 1963, Sargent recorded Gay's The Beggar's Opera, one of his few operas on record other than Gilbert and Sullivan. This was also reissued on CD.
caption: Painting based on The Beggar's Opera William Hogarth c. 1728
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