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History
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The Fulham Symphony Orchestra (FSO) has a long and distinguished history. It was founded in 1958 by Stephen Hunt as the Fulham Municipal Orchestra, and operated in association with Fulham Borough Council. The orchestra has been central to community life ever since. The orchestra renamed itself the Fulham Symphony Orchestra in the 1980s and became an independent organisation in the 1990s.
Under highly respected conductors such as Joseph Vandernoot, Andrea Quinn, Peter Stark, Roland Roberts and Levon Parikian the orchestra undertook many adventurous musical projects, including several performances of rare operas.
2001 saw the arrival of the current Musical Director, Marc Dooley. Under Marc’s direction the FSO has gained a reputation for performing challenging programmes to a very high standard. The orchestra works regularly with some of the finest young soloists in the world at the start of their careers.
In recent seasons FSO has performed with outstanding soloists such as Clara Rodriguez, Elizabeth Cooney and Alina Ibragimova. It has also given a rare performance of Smetana’s epic Má Vlast cycle, the UK première of Wolfgang Rihm’s Three Waltzes for Orchestra, and memorable performances of Bruckner’s Symphony No. 6, Mahler’s Symphony No. 10 (Cooke performing version) and Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 11. In December 2005 the orchestra gave the first performance of Bruckner’s Symphony No. 9 complete with the 2005 edition of the reconstruction of the finale undertaken by Samale, Cohrs, Philips and Mazzuca.
In March 2005 FSO joined forces with the BBC Symphony Orchestra for a repertoire evening, in which each member of the FSO shared a desk with a BBC SO player. At the BBC’s Maida Vale Studios the combined orchestra of 150 players worked on Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 6 and Wolfgang Rihm’s Drängender Walzer. The collaboration with the BBC SO continued in 2006, with a performance at the Barbican as part of the BBC festival, Get Carter! A Celebration of the Music of Elliott Carter in which the FSO played alongside the Youth Orchestra of Hammersmith and Fulham (YOoHF) and the BBC Symphony; and a further repertoire session on Mahler’s Fifth Symphony.
The FSO continues to have a high profile in the local community, performing regularly at Fulham Town Hall since 2003, and playing a major part in the Hammersmith and Fulham Festival since 2002. In May 2005 the orchestra took part in a large-scale Hammersmith and Fulham educational project, Playing with Dreams, a new work based on A Midsummer Night’s Dream with music composed by Alan Simmons.
The FSO is committed to discovering exciting new music. It has performed works by composers such as Luciano Berio, Wolfgang Rihm and Mauricio Kagel in recent concerts. For the 2004–05 season, the FSO was one of two orchestras selected nationwide to participate in the Society for the Promotion of New Music’s Adopt a Composer scheme, and ‘adopted’ composer Owen Bourne. The result of this association, the World Première of Dooley’s Bass written specially for the orchestra, took place in July 2005.
The orchestra is entirely independent and makes ends meet through membership subscriptions and concert receipts, as well as generous support from sponsors Group4Securicor, from the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham, and from the Novotel Hammersmith which provides rehearsal space.
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Contact us
Please email us at info@fso.org.uk
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