Leicestershire Schools Symphony Orchestra

The Leicestershire Schools Symphony Orchestra (LSSO) is a youth orchestra based in Leicester, England. The players, aged between 15 and 18, are all drawn from secondary schools in the county of Leicestershire and the City of Leicester.

The Leicestershire County School of Music was the first of its kind, founded in 1948 by the county's first Music Adviser, Eric Pinkett O.B.E., with the backing of the Leicestershire education committee headed up by the visionary Director of Education, Stuart Mason.

By the mid 1960s, Eric Pinkett - supported by the patronage of Sir Michael Tippett - had managed to put the LSSO on the UK musical map. The orchestra also established an international reputation due to its regular concert tours of major European cities, an annual tradition that started with visits to Essen in 1953, The Hague in 1954, Aarhus in 1955 and Oslo in 1956.

Over the years the orchestra's repertoire has included a number of specially commissioned works by composers such as Sir Michael Tippett (The Shires Suite), David Bedford (Alleluia Timpanis), Bryan Kelly (Sancho Panza, Sinfonia Concertante), Anthony Milner (Te Deum), Alan Ridout (Concertante Music, Symphony No.2, Funeral Games for a Greek Warrior), Brian Bonsor (The Pied Piper of Hamelin), William Mathias (Sinfonietta), Herbert Baumann (Variations on an Old English Folk Song), and Herbert Chappell (Overture Panache).

Since the late 1950s, many illustrious musicians have conducted the orchestra and these have included Sir Michael Tippett, Alan Ridout, Sir Arthur Bliss, Sir Adrian Boult, Sir Malcolm Arnold, Sir Charles Groves, Norman Del Mar, George Weldon, Rudolf Schwarz, James Loughran, Laszlo Heltay, Herbert Chappell, Bryan Kelly, Alan Ridout, Herbert Baumann, Douglas Cameron, Lesley Woodgate, Stanford Robinson, Oivin Fjelstad, Bernard Keeffe, Alexander Goehr, Russell Burgess, Uri Segal, Havelock Nelson, Willy Gohl, Dan Vogel, Maurice Handford, Pierre Cao, Myung Whun Chung, Douglas Young, William Mathias, Martyn Brabbins and André Previn.

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