Boult’s Forcible Retirement From the BBC

After the E Minor Symphony, Boult gave no more premieres of Vaughan Williams’s symphonies. Their friendship remained strong, as did Boult’s unswerving devotion to Vaughan Williams’s music, but circum-stances were changing. The early months of 1949 were a precarious time in Boult’s career as rumours circulated about him being forced to retire from the BBCSO when he reached its statutory retirement age of 60. The first conductor floated as a potential replacement (late in 1948) was John Barbirolli. An article in the Manchester Guardian on 17 February 1949 had the headline ‘Sir Adrian Boult staying on as BBC Conductor’, which quoted a statement from Boult’s sister Olive: ‘The BBC asked [Boult] last summer if he would stay. He said he was perfectly well and would be more than willing to stay. The question of Mr Barbirolli’s coming was simply a feeler put out to find out if in, say, four or five years’ time, he would be prepared to come.’

But there were machinations afoot inside the BBC. When Steuart Wilson was installed as Head of Music in April 1948, he told the Director-General that his first priority was ‘to plan for the future of the Symphony Orchestra, gradually replacing Boult’. It is hard to escape the thought that Wilson’s enthusiasm to replace Boult was motivated, at least in part, by the animosity that existed between them since Boult’s marriage to Ann Bowles, Wilson’s former wife. Whatever the reasons, Barbirolli was offered the post, but his ties to the Hallé in Manchester were stronger than Wilson had imagined, and Barbirolli declined on 28 December 1948. There followed much agitated discussion about possible replacements (including approaches to Rafael Kubelík and even to Bruno Walter, who enjoyed a warm friendship with Boult). As Nicholas Kenyon has pointed out, the murky plots being hatched in smoke-filled rooms at the BBC completely overlooked Boult’s own circumstances: