Key people in the LCP were the Leader John Holloway, an ardent advocate of historical practice, and viola Colin Kitching, who fixed and managed the orchestra with great devotion, and also acted as Librarian. When we began there were only just enough players with the right instruments and intentions to make up a full orchestra. Since other groups were forming at the same time, the best players tended to appear in different ones all the time.

We were quite modest in our concert-giving, especially since we had no financial support whatever. But our three or four appearances a year did tend to be fairly startling. I remember the critic Nicholas Kenyon writing about the rare appearance of a “blazing comet”, completely changing the way we needed to think about Classical style.

Early in the 1980s I seized on Beethoven, because I realised how far modern conductors had strayed from his intentions. We had an orchestra of the right size (40-odd rather than 80-odd), that sat on the stage in a suitable arrangement, who could play without all that irrelevant vibrato, and understood 18th century phraseing. But the crucial need for change was the question of speed. Beethoven added metronome indications for every movement, and every change of movement, in his symphonies, and was enthusiastic about Maelzel’s new machine. Yet the great Beethoven guru of the 70s, Otto Klemperer, and almost all his contemporaries, totally ignored the Master’s wishes and played his slow movements for instance  at actually half the stated speed.

That tradition saw Beethoven as grandiose and Romantic, quite forgetting his human, Classical origins. What the metronome showed us was that he was a true follower of Haydn and Mozart, with fast outer movements and relaxed but by no means slow Andantes. True, he became more daemonic than them, but he still followed Classical tradition. We boldly printed his metronome marks  on the first CD sleeve. (For a detailed examination  of this subject please look at the article “Beethoven’s Speeds”).

Because, after a few experimental years we were ready by 1986 to record the symphonies, and very luckily, helped by a couple of blazing Proms,  EMI asked us. At first they offered just one recording; any more we would have to pay for ourselves. But soon, even during the first exciting sessions on Symphonies 2 and 8, they changed their minds and we were set for a cycle. With stunning reviews and a Gramophone prize, other companies suddenly showed interest, which was useful when EMI bosses came down in force to discuss an ongoing contract. My percentage royalty shot up when I mentioned the competition.

Another bit of good fortune was a partnership with the software company Logica. Philip Hughes and I were at Clare College together in Cambridge and we had shared a flat in Hammersmith when we had both resigned our jobs and  were starting from scratch. His new company Logica took off quickly and became very successful. Philip was passionate about music, and threw his weight behind a sponsorship of the Beethoven series of concerts and recordings. He brought lots of potential customers to the concerts, and said that Logica made more money out of the resulting business than they spent on us. A very satisfactory outcome.

Our Beethovens were somewhat of a sensation. At one point we had no less than three entries in the NYT Best Seller list for instance. The BBC recorded the cycle for television and put them out one a week in the run up to Christmas 1990. I was amazed nevertheless when my EMI royalties for the first two years amounted to £40,000. I couldn’t think it was fair for me to earn so much more than the players who had made it all possible. So I paid each player a rather handsome bonus, and felt much better about it.

Now we could pursue a steady progress through the 19th century repertoire, learning a step at a time how orchestral music could be realised historically. Weber, Rossini, Mendelssohn, Schumann. Berlioz, Brahms, Liszt , Bruckner, and Wagner came one by one into our sights, and with each we took the contemporary evidence very seriously. Our instruments gradually changed, but, surprisingly, Pure Tone did not. It became clear for instance that vibrato was not an important part of Wagner’s sound world any more than Bach’s.

We never played a huge number of weeks in the year. We didn’t have the funds, and I was busy with opera, choirs, and guest conducting. But we toured America a few times, and France, Germany, Austria, Italy, Holland and Finland. And recordings of each new research project went on apace. When the CD boom faded, and EMI lost their nerve and stumbled, all our recordings were bought by Erato. The whole series has recently been reissued by Warner in a 45 CD box.

By 1996 we had effectively finished the work of the laboratory. We had reached our goal of studying most of the core 19th century repertoire. I thought it time to stop running LCP and handed over the remaining work to the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, where I already had good relations. I gave them our outstanding dates free of charge, and looked forward to working with them occasionally in the future. Two major 19th century figures we had not studied with LCP were Tchaikovsky and Mahler. Both of these I achieved with OAE instead and continued to make occasional appearances with them.

LCP became another of those groups with which I have been associated, which “strut and fret their hour upon the stage, and then are heard no more”. Sometimes I have wondered was it my fault that the Schütz Choir, the Bournemouth Sinfonietta, Kent Opera, and LCP have all disappeared? I guess not; organisations don’t have to last for ever. Rather I feel these ones did not fail; they served their time with courage and energy, and achieved what they set out to do.