BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra

The BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra (also known as BBC SSO) is one of the five symphony orchestras of the BBC, in this case for Scotland. Its home base is Glasgow, the Glasgow City Hall.

The orchestra was founded as the BBC Scottish Orchestra in 1935 by Ian Whyte, a Scottish composer and conductor. It makes recordings for BBC Scotland and gives public and educational concerts in Glasgow, but also in the rest of Scotland, the United Kingdom and beyond. It regularly performs as part of the Proms and at the festivals in Edinburgh, Cheltenham, Huddersfield and on the Orkney Islands. The orchestra has a recording contract with Hyperion Records. As of 2007, the house composers are Jonathan Harvey and Anna Meredith.

In the years 1981, 1982, 1994 and 1995 the orchestra had no chief conductor:

1935-1946: Guy Warrack
1946-1960: Ian Whyte
1960-1965: Norman Del Mar
1965-1971: James Loughran
1971-1977: Christopher Seaman
1978-1980: Karl Anton Rickenbacher
1983-1993: Jerzy Maksymiuk (now conductor laureate)
1996-2002: Osmo Vänskä
2003-2009: Ilan Volkov
2009-: Donald Runnicles

BBC Symphony Orchestra
BBC Philharmonic
BBC National Orchestra of Wales
BBC Concert Orchestra

BBC website about the Scottish Symphony Orchestra