Wikipedia quotes Sargent's biographer, Charles Reid, as saying that this nickname "was first in circulation among orchestral players before the war and that they used it in no spirit of adulation." Wikipedia continues: "It may have arisen from his impeccable and stylish appearance – he always wore a red or white carnation in his buttonhole (the carnation is now the symbol of the school named for him). This was perhaps reinforced by his brisk tempi early in his career, and by a story about his racing from one recording session to another. Another explanation, that he was named after cartoonist Ronald Searle's St Trinian's character Flash Harry, is certainly wrong: Sargent's nickname was current long before the first appearance of the St Trinian's character in 1954. Sargent's devoted fans, the Promenaders, used the nickname in an approving sense, and shortened it to Flash, though Sargent was not especially keen on the sobriquet, even thus modified.
Wikipedia also reports that Sargent was the subject of some inevitable quips from Sir Thomas Beecham: "Beecham and Sargent were allies from the early days of the London Philharmonic to Beecham's final months when they were planning joint concerts. They even happened to share the same birthday. When Sargent was incapacitated by tuberculosis in 1933, Beecham conducted a performance of Messiah at the Albert Hall to raise money to support his younger colleague. Sargent loved Beecham's company, and took in good part his quips, such as his reference to the rising conductor Herbert von Karajan, as 'a kind of musical Malcolm Sargent' and, on learning that Sargent's car was caught in rifle fire in Palestine, 'I had no idea the Arabs were so musical.' Beecham declared that Sargent 'is the greatest choirmaster we have ever produced ... he makes the buggers sing like blazes.' And on another occasion he said that Sargent was 'the most expert of all our conductors – myself excepted of course.'
© Macclesfield Quiz League 2020