1950s and 60s, Performance in Period Style

The BBC has had a powerful influence on our musical taste, and in this BBC centenary year, Nicholas Kenyon, a former controller of Radio 3 and director of the Proms, delves into the archives to explore the BBC’s role in reviving the centuries of early music from before the 18th century.

Today Kenyon explores how in the creative years of the 1950s and 1960s, the revival of early music had a sense of adventure; new orchestras were established like the Academy of St Martin-in-the-Fields which explored the repertory in broadcasts and recordings. He highlights the work of three contrasted pioneers: Imogen Holst, who programmed concerts of medieval music at Aldeburgh, promoted by the BBC Transcription Service; Denis Stevens, the musicologist and conductor who broadcast and worked for the BBC Third Programme but became a hugely controversial figure because of his argumentative nature; and William Glock, who became the BBC’s Controller of Music in 1959 and transformed the repertory of the Proms, welcoming in a whole range of earlier music that had never been heard before at the Proms.

Presented by Nicholas Kenyon Produced by Melissa FitzGerald