Halle
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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Dobrinka Tabakova
Klassik - Erschienen bei Halle Concerts Society am 06.10.2023
24-Bit 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Vaughan Williams: The Complete Symphonies
Symphonieorchester - Erschienen bei Halle Concerts Society am 03.06.2022
24-Bit 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Vaughan Williams: Pastoral Symphony
Symphonieorchester - Erschienen bei Halle Concerts Society am 03.11.2014
Gramophone Editor's Choice24-Bit 96.0 kHz - Stereo -
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Elgar Oratorios
Klassik - Erschienen bei Halle Concerts Society am 02.06.2023
24-Bit 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Wagner Siegfried
Oper - Erschienen bei Halle Concerts Society am 07.06.2019
Gramophone Editor's Choice24-Bit 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Vaughan Williams: Symphony No. 7 "Sinfonia Antartica" & Symphony No. 9
Symphonieorchester - Erschienen bei Halle Concerts Society am 03.06.2022
24-Bit 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Wagner: Parsifal
Oper - Erschienen bei Halle Concerts Society am 02.06.2017
24-Bit 48.0 kHz - Stereo -
Brahms: Piano Concertos
Halle, Sir Mark Elder, Sunwook Kim
Instrumentalmusik - Erschienen bei Halle Concerts Society am 05.05.2017
24-Bit 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Elgar: Sea Pictures, Polonia & Pomp and Circumstance
Halle, Sir Mark Elder, Alice Coote
Klassik - Erschienen bei Halle Concerts Society am 06.11.2015
24-Bit 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Debussy: Nocturnes
Klassik - Erschienen bei Halle Concerts Society am 01.11.2019
24-Bit 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Sibelius: Symphony No.2, The Oceanides, Pohjola's Daughter
Klassik - Erschienen bei Halle Concerts Society am 06.05.2013
24-Bit 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Wagner Das Rheingold
Oper - Erschienen bei Halle Concerts Society am 01.06.2018
24-Bit 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
A Shropshire Lad: English Songs Orchestrated by Roderick Williams
Halle, Sir Mark Elder, Roderick Williams
Vokalmusik (weltlich und geistlich) - Erschienen bei Halle Concerts Society am 04.11.2022
24-Bit 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Debussy: Images & Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune
Klassik - Erschienen bei Halle Concerts Society am 03.07.2020
24-Bit 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Elgar : Wand of Youth
Symphonieorchester - Erschienen bei Halle Concerts Society am 02.11.2018
24-Bit 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Sibelius : Symphonies Nos 4 & 6
Symphonieorchester - Erschienen bei Halle Concerts Society am 07.02.2020
24-Bit 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Elgar: Violin Concerto, The Kingdom Prelude, The Dream of Gerontius Prelude and the Angel's Farewell
Klassik - Erschienen bei Halle Concerts Society am 01.02.2010
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Shostakovich Symphony No.5 - Four Romances on Poems by Pushkin
Halle, Sir Mark Elder, James Platt
Symphonieorchester - Erschienen bei Halle Concerts Society am 01.03.2019
24-Bit 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Symphony No. 7 in C Major, Op.60 - 'Leningrad'
Symphonieorchester - Erschienen bei Halle Concerts Society am 02.06.2014
24-Bit 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Part of Your World (From "The Little Mermaid")
Original Soundtrack - Erschienen bei Walt Disney Records am 26.04.2023
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo