Promenade Concert British Novelties for 1926

The 1926 Promenade Concert series took place from Saturday, 14 August 1926 to Monday, 16 October 1926. As usual at that era, the concerts were held at the Queen's Hall in London and featured the New Queen's Hall Orchestra, conducted by Sir Henry Wood. This season was the last under the sole management of impresario Robert Newman, who died in November of that year, before the BBC assumed sponsorship of the concerts in 1927.

The period of the Proms was overshadowed by post General Strike tensions. The Miners’ Federation began formal negotiations with Stanley Baldwin’s government on 18 August, four days after the festival began. On a more optimistic note, the legendary cricketer Jack Hobbs scored 316 runs for Surrey against Middlesex in a match at Lord's.

Culturally, the Jazz Age was in full swing, with London’s nightlife pulsing to American rhythms in the dance halls and clubs that defined the era. The year 1926 marked a decisive cultural shift in Britain, as Art Deco modernity took hold through shorter skirts, bobbed hair, and a flourishing entertainment scene shaped by jazz, cinema, and the rise of ready‑to‑wear fashion.

• Frederic Austin: Suite from the music to The Insect Play (11 October 1926)
• Arthur Bliss: Introduction and Allegro for full orchestra (8 September 1926).
• Rutland Boughton: Overture: The Queen of Cornwall (31 August 1926).
• Eric Coates: Phantasy for orchestra The Three Bears (7 October 1926)
• Gordon Jacob: Viola Concerto in C minor (23 September 1926).
• Susan Spain-Dunk: Concert Overture The Kentish Downs (30 August 1926)

Frederic Austin (1872-1952) was an English baritone, teacher, and composer recalled for revitalising The Beggar’s Opera in the 1920s. A champion of contemporary music, he premiered works by Delius and performed widely before becoming artistic director of the British National Opera Company in 1924. His own catalogue is represented by the Symphony in E major, the Rhapsody: Spring and the exhilarating Overture: Sea Venturers. They have all been recorded on CD (Classico CLASSCD 404).

The Insect Play, by the Czech writers Josef and Karel Čapek, was a sharp piece of satire in which every character is an insect, their behaviour mirroring familiar human follies. Butterflies, beetles, ants, snails, and crickets become emblems of our own vanities and obsessions, and the third act’s vast Ant Battle carries a clear pacifist message. For the English stage, Nigel Playfair and Clifford Bax created a free adaptation from Paul Sevier’s literal translation, with a score composed by Frederic Austin. The production ran at the Regent Theatre.

Phillip Sear plays two extracts from The Insect Play: the Three Step, here and the One-Step, here.

Arthur Bliss has retained his place in the annals of British music. His remarkable Colour Symphony still has the occasional outing and has six recordings. The ballet Checkmate has kept a toehold in the repertoire. Listeners who are not fans will have heard the “March” from his film score for the remarkable film Things to Come released in 1935. Bliss’s Morning Heroes, a powerful choral symphony commemorating the fallen of the First World War, is regarded as one of his most personal and enduring achievements.

The Introduction and Allegro, was completed in 1926, belongs to a string of confident, optimistic music Bliss composed after returning from service in the First World War. It was devised originally for the Promenade Concert held on 8 September 1926. It reflects his growing reputation as a brilliant orchestrator and his alignment with the neoclassical currents shaping British music in the mid‑1920s. It also marks a key step in the evolution of his public style, bridging the experimental boldness of his early post‑war works and the more polished, extroverted voice that would soon emerge in pieces like the above-mentioned A Colour Symphony and Morning Heroes.

It has been recorded four times, with the most recent being issued on the Chandos label, with Andrew Davis conducting the BBC Symphony Orchestra (Chandos CHSA 5191).

Rutland Boughton’s opera The Queen of Cornwall, premiered at the 1924 Glastonbury Festival, is a notable "choral drama" adapted from Thomas Hardy’s eponymous verse play. A darker, swifter successor to his The Immortal Hour, it reimagines the Tristan and Iseult legend. It was praised for its orchestral confidence and seamless transition between dialogue and song.

Originally produced without an overture, Boughton provided one for the 1926 Promenade Concerts. It is a substantial, thirteen-minute symphonic poem that expanded the opera’s original minimalist Glastonbury orchestration into a lush, Wagnerian soundscape for a full romantic orchestra. Although the entire opera has been recorded on the Dutton Epoch label, (2CDLX7256) the Overture remains a desideratum.

Eric Coates wrote three ‘phantasies’ inspired by children’s fairy stories: Cinderella, The Selfish Giant, and The Three Bears. The latter was specifically produced for the Promenade Concert held on 7 October 1926. As the title suggests it was based on ‘Goldilocks and the Three Bears. It was dedicated to Coates’s son, Austin, on his fourth birthday. This personal connection highlights its whimsical nature. Michael Payne (Thesis, 2007, p.507) has pointed out, the story is eminently suitable “to picturesque orchestral treatment and the fact that every hearer is familiar with it will make this work easily intelligible.” Commenting in the Musical Times (November 1926, p.1026), Eric Blom considered it “a smoothly written little work that contrives to outline the story and to retain at the same time a certain shape of its own.” Central is the recurring leitmotiv of “Who’s been sitting in my chair?” which provides a cohesive thread throughout the entire phantasy - a work never short in musical wit. Many recordings have been made of The Three Bears. The BBC Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Rumon Gamba can be heard here.

Gordon Jacob’s Viola Concerto No. 1 (1925) is an impressive one-movement composition that balances "rugged virility" with "gentle singing." Premiered in 1926 by Bernard Shore, it explores the dual nature of the viola through three distinct sections. It occupies a lush, romantic landscape reminiscent of Bax and Vaughan Williams, shifting between pastoral serenity and defiant, heroic "calls to arms." Despite its strength and "sensational" lyricism, the concerto remained neglected after the 1920s until the recent recording. It stands as a powerful testament to Jacob’s ability to blend neo-classical structure with uncharacteristic, non-sentimental romanticism. It can be heard on an album titled Gordon Jacob: Complete Music for Viola and Orchestra, (Dutton Epoch, CDLX 7258) which also includes his second concerto, the Concert Piece, and the Three Pieces for Viola and Orchestra. Played by Helen Callus, viola, and the BBC Concert Orchestra is conducted by Stephen Bell.

Folkstone-born Susan Spain-Dunk’s (1880-1962) Concert Overture The Kentish Downs (1926) is a notable example of 20th-century British pastoralism. Premiered at the Promenade Concerts on 30 August, it reflects her love of her native Kent.

Moving beyond mere landscape painting, the overture captures the rugged beauty and shifting light of the North Downs through strong melodic lines and rich, late-Romantic orchestration. It balances rhythmic vitality with a sense of expansive serenity, exploring her technical competence. As a pioneering female composer-conductor, Spain-Dunk used this piece to cement her reputation for creating "evocative and expertly crafted" orchestral tone poems. To my knowledge, it has not been given a modern recording, although there is a performance of the Overture on YouTube, here.

Out of the six British Novelties heard at the 1926 Promenade Season, only two have really held their place in the concert and recording stakes: Eric Coates: Phantasy for orchestra The Three Bears and Arthur Bliss’s Introduction and Allegro. Susan Spain-Dunk’s Concert Overture The Kentish Downs, Frederic Austin: Suite from the music to The Insect Play and Rutland Boughton: Overture The Queen of Cornwall await recording. And finally, Gordon Jacobs’s Viola Concerto in C minor has had a single recording made but has not really entered the repertoire.