by Hall, "but it seemed that nobody wanted to commit themselves." During his Covent Garden tenure, Davis returned to the BBC Symphony Orchestra as principal guest conductor from 1971 to 1975, and held the same post with the Boston Symphony Orchestra from 1972 to 1984. In 1977, he became the first English conductor to appear at Bayreuth, where he conducted the opening opera of the festival, Tannhäuser. Despite the Bayreuth habitués' suspicion of newcomers, his Tannhäuser was "highly successful". He debuted at the Metropolitan Opera, New York City, in 1967 with Peter Grimes, the Vienna State Opera in 1986 and the Bavarian State Opera in 1994. Bavarian Radio Symphony and London Symphony Orchestras From 1983 to 1993, Davis was chief conductor of the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, with whom he developed his concert hall repertoire, including symphonies by Bruckner and Mahler. He was offered but declined the music directorships of the Cleveland Orchestra in succession to Maazel and the New York Philharmonic in succession to Zubin Mehta. As a principal guest conductor he was associated with the Dresden Staatskapelle, which appointed him honorary conductor (Ehrendirigent) in 1990, the first in the orchestra's 460-year-history, and whose musicians referred to Davis with the nickname "Der Sir". From 1998 to 2003, he was principal guest conductor of the New York Philharmonic. In 1995, Davis was appointed principal conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra, the culmination of a long association with the orchestra. He had first conducted the LSO in 1959, and in 1964 he headed the orchestra's first world tour. He became principal guest conductor in 1975 and was at the helm in the LSO's first major series at its new home, the Barbican Centre, in a Berlioz/Tippett festival in 1983. In 1997 he conducted the LSO's first residency at Lincoln Center in New York City. Davis was the longest-serving principal conductor in the history of the LSO, holding the post from 1995 until 2006, after which the orchestra appointed him its President, an honour previously held only by Arthur Bliss, William Walton, Karl Böhm and Leonard Bernstein. On 21 June 2009, 50 years to the day after his first LSO performance, a special concert was given at the Barbican, at which present-day players were joined by many past members of the orchestra. His programme for the concert was Mozart's Symphony No 40 in G minor, and Brahms's Piano Concerto No 2, with