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Mark Elder and the Hallé choral revolution
On August 17th of this year, the Usher Hall in Edinburgh will host Sir Mark Elder’s final concert as Principal Conductor and Music Director of the Hallé Orchestra, nearly 24 years after his first concert in the role at the beginning of the 2000/01 season…
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On Air – The Hallé Choir and Radio: Part 2
Within this second part I don’t intend to write a chronological history of the choir’s relationship with the BBC. Given that, at time of writing, I have managed to locate 159 separate radio performance given by the choir over the years, such a history would be inordinately long and somewhat dull. Instead, I will attempt…
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On Air – The Hallé Choir and Radio: Part 1
February 5th 2025 will see the 100th anniversary of the Hallé Choir’s first broadcast on the BBC. In this two-part blog I will look at a century of the choir’s appearances on BBC Radio. In this first part I will look at the establishment of the BBC in 1922 and how its commitment to music,…
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A Tale of Two Pandemics
As we entered 2024 I was conscious that later in the year we will be marking the fifth anniversary of the first mention in the news, far away in China, of a troubling sounding new virus, the novel coronavirus that would become known to us all as Covid-19. This set me thinking. Firstly I was…
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On Record – Part 4: The Mark Elder Years 2013 – 2023
I left the story of the Hallé Choir’s recording history at the point where the choir won its third Gramophone Award out of a possible three for its trilogy of Elgar oratorio recordings under Sir Mark Elder. The next recording to be released featuring the choir showed evidence of Elder’s commitment to popularising the wider…
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On Record – Part 3: The Mark Elder Years 2000 – 2012
The third part of my review of the recordings that the Hallé Choir has made over the years begins in the Spring of 1999. I had intended this post to cover all of the choir’s recordings from that point up to the present day, but sheer weight of words has made me to decide to…
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On Record – Part 2: James Loughran to Kent Nagano
Continuing the story of the Hallé Choir’s recording history, the years between John Barbirolli’s death in 1970 and Mark Elder’s appointment as music director in 1999 were not always the most successful years financially for the Hallé Orchestra, but as far as recordings were concerned it was a fruitful period. Many of the recordings the…
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On Record – Part 1: Hamilton Harty and John Barbirolli
The vast majority of performances by the Hallé Choir through the years have been by their very nature ephemeral. The choir have turned up at the Free Trade Hall, or Bridgewater Hall, or an out of town venue and done their stuff, and the memory of the performance has existed simply in the minds of…
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R.H. Wilson – ‘A Full Man’
The Hallé Choir has had remarkably few choral directors in its 165 year history. For example, the first 67 years of the choir’s existence saw just three, one of whom only served for a couple of years. Edward Hecht, the man Charles Hallé himself picked to lead his nascent chorus, served from the choir’s foundation…
Mr Hallé’s Choir: a blog about Manchester’s Hallé Choir
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