Sir Malcolm Sargent

Sir Malcolm Sargent was born in Stamford, Lincolnshire, in April 1895, the son of a music dealer and church organist. He studied organ at Peterborough Cathedral and took his Doctor of Music from Durham at the unusually young age of nineteen, and built his early career as a church organist and choral conductor. He moved into the orchestral profession through his conducting of his own works at the Promenade Concerts in 1921, and across the inter-war years became one of Britain’s best-known concert conductors.

He held the principal conductorship of the Royal Choral Society from 1928 to 1967, the Liverpool Philharmonic from 1942 to 1948, the BBC Symphony Orchestra from 1950 to 1957, and was chief conductor of the BBC Proms from 1948 to 1966 — a role for which he became publicly identified as the host of the season’s Last Night and as one of the most recognisable figures in British musical life. He was particularly associated with the choral repertoire (Handel, Mendelssohn, Elgar, Vaughan Williams, Walton) and was a regular guest conductor at the Three Choirs Festival, the Huddersfield Choral Society, and the major British provincial choral organisations.

Sargent was knighted in 1947. He died in London in October 1967, just after his last Proms season. Music Preserved’s archive includes a substantial range of his choral and orchestral work across the inter-war and post-war British concert scene.