Hallé Orchestra
The Hallé Orchestra is one of Britain's oldest symphonic ensembles. The group has been led by several conductors who have achieved international renown and has presented the world premieres of significant works from Elgar's Symphony No. 1 in A flat major, Op. 55, in 1908 to Ralph Vaughan Williams' Symphony No. 7 ("Sinfonia Antartica") in 1953 to Thomas Adès' These Premises Are Alarmed in 1996.
The Hallé Orchestra is named for its founder, Charles Hallé, a German who was tasked with creating a temporary orchestra for an art exhibit in Manchester and decided to keep the group together. What he at first called the Hallé Concerts were quite popular, and Hallé remained the group's conductor until 1895. Several times, the group has gone into decline but has been rescued by a charismatic and energetic new conductor. One of these was another German, Hans Richter, who arrived in 1899 and remained until 1911 despite conflicts between orchestra-goers who favored German music (and a German conductor) and backers of homegrown talent. Both World War I and II affected the orchestra's concert life, with its home venue, the Free Trade Hall, destroyed in 1940 by bombs in the German Blitz, but it bounced back each time, under Hamilton Harty (1920-1934) and, most familiar to modern audiences, Sir John Barbirolli (1948-1970), who built up a substantial catalog of Hallé Orchestra recordings even after his retirement in 1968, when he was named conductor laureate for life. The Hallé Orchestra's recording catalog extends back to the early LP era; an early release, with Barbirolli as conductor, featured Elgar's Enigma Variations.
Under conductors James Loughran, Stanislaw Skrowaczewski, and Kent Nagano, the orchestra continued to face periods of financial uncertainty caused partly by competition with the rival BBC Northern Orchestra. The two groups agreed to share Manchester's new Bridgewater Hall, opened in 1996 by Queen Elizabeth II (the Free Trade Hall, despite poor acoustics, had been repaired after the war), and since 2000, the orchestra has enjoyed artistic stability under music director Sir Mark Elder. The orchestra's recording catalog has grown sharply since the formation of its own Hallé label in 2003; as many as four albums per year have appeared on that imprint, and the Hallé Orchestra has continued to record for EMI, NMC, and other labels. In 2019, Elder led the orchestra in a Hallé label recording of the Shostakovich Symphony No. 5 in D minor, Op. 47.
The Hallé Orchestra collaborates with a Hallé Choir, formed by Charles Hallé himself, and, since 2002, with a Hallé Youth Orchestra. In 2023, the Hallé Orchestra announced that Kahchun Wong would succeed Elder, becoming principal conductor for the 2024-2025 season. During the 2010s and 2020s, the orchestra has been extremely prolific in the recording studio, issuing 15 albums in the year 2020 alone, despite pandemic-era restrictions. Some were on the Hallé label, but the majority were on the major Warner Classics label. By 2023, when the Hallé Orchestra issued an album of works by Dobrinka Tabakova, the orchestra's recording catalog comprised more than 150 digital releases, plus many others from the analog era.
© James Manheim /TiVo
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Mahler: Kindertotenlieder & Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen
(Dame) Janet Baker, Hallé Orchestra, Sir John Barbirolli
Klassik - Erschienen bei Warner Classics am 01.01.1968
24-Bit 192.0 kHz - Stereo -
Sibelius: Symphonies Nos. 5, 7 & En Saga
Hallé Orchestra, Sir Mark Elder
Symphonieorchester - Erschienen bei Halle Concerts Society am 08.04.2016
24-Bit 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Dvořák: The Great Symphonies
Hallé Orchestra, Sir John Barbirolli
Klassik - Erschienen bei Urania Records am 15.12.2011
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Messiaen: Saint Francois D'Assise
Klassik - Erschienen bei Deutsche Grammophon (DG) am 01.01.1999
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Vaughan Williams: A Sea Symphony
Hallé Orchestra, Sir Mark Elder
Symphonieorchester - Erschienen bei Halle Concerts Society am 04.09.2015
24-Bit 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Ernest Chausson: Symphonie, Poème de l'amour et de la mer - Claude Debussy: Printemps
Boston Symphony Orchestra, Charles Munch, Kathleen Ferrier, Hallé Orchestra, Sir John Barbirolli
Symphonien - Erschienen bei Praga Digitals am 01.10.2016
24-Bit 96.0 kHz - Stereo -
Mahler: Symphony No.9
Hallé Orchestra, Sir Mark Elder
Symphonieorchester - Erschienen bei Halle Concerts Society am 02.03.2015
24-Bit 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Mahler: Rückert Lieder, Kindertotenlieder & Des Knaben Wunderhorn
Kent Nagano, Dietrich Henschel, Hallé Orchestra
Klassik - Erschienen bei Warner Classics International am 01.03.2001
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Weber Overtures
Hallé Orchestra, Stanislaw Skrowaczewski
Klassik - Erschienen bei imp am 01.01.1994
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Sibelius: Masterworks
Hallé Orchestra, London Symphony Orchestra, BBC Symphony Orchestra
Klassik - Erschienen bei The Golden Legacy of Music am 12.08.2016
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Sibelius: Symphony No. 6
Symphonieorchester - Erschienen bei Warner Classics am 22.01.2016
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
A Christmas Celebration
Klassik - Erschienen bei Halle Concerts Society am 02.09.2016
24-Bit 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Espoir
Michael Spyres, Carlo Rizzi, Hallé Orchestra
Klassik - Erschienen bei Opera Rara am 08.09.2017
24-Bit 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Historical Bruckner Vol. VIII
Sir John Barbirolli, Hallé Orchestra
Symphonieorchester - Erschienen bei Urania Records am 31.05.2023
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Elgar: The Dream of Gerontius, Op. 38
(Dame) Janet Baker, Richard Lewis, Hallé Orchestra, Sir John Barbirolli
Klassik - Erschienen bei Warner Classics am 01.01.1965
24-Bit 192.0 kHz - Stereo -
Vaughan Williams: Orchestral Works - Elgar: Cello Concerto in E Minor, Op. 85
Hallé Orchestra, Sinfonia Of London, Philharmonia Orchestra, André Navarra, Sir John Barbirolli
Klassik - Erschienen bei Urania Records am 29.04.2016
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Haydn, Corelli & Pergolesi: Oboe Concerti
Evelyn Rothwell, Hallé Orchestra, Sir John Barbirolli
Klassik - Erschienen bei Warner Classics am 05.02.2021
24-Bit 192.0 kHz - Stereo -
Falla: 7 Popular Spanish Folksongs (Orch. Halffter)
Marina De Gabarain, Hallé Orchestra, Sir John Barbirolli
Klassik - Erschienen bei Warner Classics am 23.10.2020
24-Bit 192.0 kHz - Stereo -
Huw Watkins: Flute Concerto, Violin Concerto & Symphony
Alina Ibragimova, Adam Walker, Hallé Orchestra, Ryan Wigglesworth
Klassik - Erschienen bei NMC Recordings am 21.09.2018
Gramophone Editor's Choice16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Holt: A Table of Noises, St. Vitus in the Kettle & Witness to a Snow Miracle
Colin Currie, Chloë Hanslip, Hallé Orchestra, Nicholas Collon
Klassik - Erschienen bei NMC Recordings am 24.03.2017
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Gounod: La Colombe
Erin Morley, Javier Camarena, Michèle Losier, Laurent Naouri, Hallé Orchestra, Mark Elder
Klassik - Erschienen bei Opera Rara am 01.01.2015
24-Bit 96.0 kHz - Stereo