twenty years he had enjoyed an exceptionally warm rapport with members of the orchestra, but it was understood that the time had come when he wished to be released from the strain of the road journey from his home in Lytham St Anne’s for rehearsals and concerts. His successor, Arthur Butterworth, had already acted as the orchestra’s associate conductor. Originally a trumpeter with the Scottish and Hallé orchestras, he had given up his playing career in order to concentrate on conducting and composing, in which his reputation was steadily growing. (His skill as an orchestrator was recognised by Barbirolli who more than once called upon him, in the Hallé’s cash-strapped 1950s, to cue the parts of unaffordable ‘extras’ into those of standard instruments.) Butterworth was to conduct the Phil for the next 30 years. He inherited a well-established, confident orchestra – already large, it was to grow under him still further (in the 1971-72 Centenary [sic] Season no fewer than 113 players are listed in the programme including an amazing 81 strings). In the 1960s amateur orchestras began to leave the safe havens of the classical core repertoire, and Butterworth relished the opportunity to steer the orchestra’s great potential into previously uncharted waters. Not that he had a free hand in the matter: nowadays conductors are usually titled ‘artistic directors’ and wield the powers implicit in that title, but in 1964, as was the way with organisations like the Phil ‘the committee’ reigned supreme – even in the choice of repertoire and soloists. The conductor was consulted on these matters but he had no executive powers. Soon after Butterworth’s appointment he suggested that the orchestra should play Elgar’s Enigma Variations for the first time. His proposal was accepted, though not without some misgivings on the part of the committee that such a ‘difficult’ work should be tackled. Nowadays the programming of such a work would be seen merely as routine. In fact Butterworth was able to persuade the committee to expand the repertoire in all directions. Standard classics were not neglected (there were memorable performances of Beethoven’s Eroica and, in the Centenary [sic] Season, with the Huddersfield Choral Society, that composer’s Ninth Symphony) but works as diverse as Hindemith’s Symphonic Metamorphoses, Berlioz’s Harold in Italy, Prokofiev’s Firth Symphony, Respighi’s The Pines of Rome, Janáček’s Sinfonietta, Holst’s The Planets and the Mussorgsky/Ravel Pictures at an Exhibition figured in Butterworth’s early years.