Malcolm Sargent

Sir Harold Malcolm Watts Sargent ( born April 29, 1895 in Ashford, † October 3, 1967 in London ) was an English conductor.

Sargent studied piano and organ and in 1911 became assistant organist Haydn Keeton at Peterborough Cathedral. From 1914 to 1924 he was organist in Melton Mowbray. At the same time he studied musicology in Durham and 1919-1921 Benno Moiseiwitsch piano with. His conducting career began when he, at the invitation of Sir Henry Wood conducted the 1921 Promenade Concerts of Queen's Hall in London.

Since 1923, Sargent taught at the Royal College of Music from 1927 to 1930 he worked with the Ballets Russes. From 1928 until his death he worked as a conductor of the Royal Choral Society, he was also from 1929 to 1940 musical director of the Courtauld - Sargent Concerts.

After a break due to illness, he conducted the late 1930s, some performances by the London Philharmonic Orchestra. He then conducted from 1939 to 1942, the Hallé Orchestra in Manchester, from 1942 to 1948 the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra and from 1950 to 1957, the BBC Symphony Orchestra. Since 1948 was also the chief conductor of the legendary Proms.

Sargent was particularly interested in contemporary British music. So he conducted, inter alia, the first performances of Gustav Holst's At the Boar's Head (1925 ), by Ralph Vaughan Williams' Hugh the Drover (1924 ), Sir John in Love ( 1929), Riders to the Sea (1937) and Symphony No.. 9 (1958 ), and William Walton's Belshazzar's Feast ( 1931) and Troilus and Cressida (1954).

Particularly well known is his arrangement of Rule, Britannia! That is played regularly at the London Last Night of the Proms.