ABSTRACT
Arthur Bliss must have thought himself extremely fortunate to be making his own records of his own music at all so early in his career. In the course of the three decades 1920–1950 Bliss became a very proficient conductor. Rather like William Walton, he could say later that he had ‘always been in demand to conduct his own music’. The premiere of A Colour Symphony at the Three Choirs’ Festival in 1922 is generally quoted as the earliest important example, though he had already appeared in the 1921 Proms season conducting his Melee fantasque, and followed it up with the Introduction and Allegro in 1926. When Bliss conducted his suite from Things to Come at Queen’s Hall on 12 September 1935, no doubt the idea was partly to draw public attention to the release of the records he had made the previous March for Decca with the London Symphony Orchestra.
