(The LSO would rightly dispute that; nobody claims that the Barbican Hall is the finest of the world's acoustics - although it has, I think, real presence and power if you're sitting in a lucky seat - yet the LSO remains near the top of the world-orchestra-tree - a rather Wagnerian locution I might have to copyright).
While it is true that some old LSO hands lament the ensemble's new sobriety (it now even includes women) and yearn for the larky days when, in André Previn's words, "it was like a sixth form with instruments", an air of corporate responsibility is well suited to a time when classical music itself faces an uncertain future.
With their economic fate in their own hands, the LSO tried to perform as much as possible, often cutting corners in rehearsal time.
Far from kowtowing to the fabled tyrants of the podium, the LSO often talked back.
Amazingly, despite its undoubted international stature, the LSO has frequently found itself on the brink of disaster, and its history is an often manic sequence of peaks and troughs.Nevertheless, after 100 years, the orchestra now seems to have entered a golden age of administrative stability and artistic prowess.
Such work is usually a condition for getting money from the state.The London Symphony Orchestra (LSO), for example, is spending £18m on an education programme based in St Luke's, a disused inner-city church.
The LSO is planning another concert there, featuring Berlioz.
The LSO had violent beginnings, in a coup staged by a group of musicians against an employer they accused of infringing their professional rights.
Much of the £16.5m that the LSO has already raised for its St Luke's project has come from companies.The purists' best-grounded lament is that top-selling classical CDs are such an unchallenging lot, chiefly film music "Harry Potter, Lordrd of the Rings", trite compilations (Classical Chillout Gold), and cheesy tenors and the products of eye-catching artistes.
LSO Live, the London Symphony's label, went into profit two years earlier than expected.
"HE MADE you feel that you were doing what you wanted," says Gareth Davies, principal flautist of the London Symphony Orchestra (LSO).
