New Man for the BBC

Britain's biggest (96 players) and best-known orchestra, the BBC Symphony, last week got its first new conductor in 20 years. The new man, who will replace retiring Sir Adrian Boult this summer: handsome, popular Sir Malcolm Sargent, 55, until 1948 founder-conductor of the Liverpool Philharmonic.

The directors of the government-subsidized BBC had searched for more than a year for a conductor who would take the job. They had dangled the -L-10,000 salary before Sir John Barbirolli, but he preferred to stick with his beloved Halle Orchestra in Manchester for less money. Brilliant young Czech Conductor Rafael Kubelik was tempted, but he turned it down to take over the Chicago Symphony (TIME, Jan. 9). After six months of negotiation, Sir Malcolm had accepted on condition that he could spend half his time free-lancing at home & abroad and conducting the roof-raising choral concerts which are his specialty (he has recorded both Handel's Messiah and Mendelssohn's Elijah for Columbia).

Conductor Sargent's arrival is not likely to mean any big housecleaning of the BBC orchestra. He has frequently guest-conducted it, and declared himself well pleased. Most English critics rank it as one of Britain's top three (the other two: Sir Thomas Beecham's Royal Philharmonic, Barbirolli's Halle). If it has not won the prestige in Britain that Arturo Toscanini's NBC Symphony has achieved in the U.S., that is mainly because, as one British critic put it, "the BBC has not had a Toscanini." But in 20 years the BBC has become a solid box-office attraction both in London, where it divides its time between the studio and the concert hall, and on provincial tours. One reason: the BBC has always offered its listeners palatable programs, heavy on the classics, with a good spicing of moderns and popular gems.

Sir Malcolm has no intention of changing any of that. Says he: "At a concert performance one can perform a new work and be reasonably sure that the people have come to hear it. But on the wireless, you've got to be sure that a majority of 10 million people want to hear what you are playing."

One change he is determined to make. So far, the BBC has played its broadcast performances in a huge, empty studio in suburban Maida Vale. If Sir Malcolm has his way, he will open the doors to an invited public as Toscanini and the NBC orchestra do. Says he: "One misses the presence of people listening."

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