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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Dvořák: Symphony No. 9 in E Minor, Op. 95 "From the New World" (Remastered 2022)
Classical - Released by Archipel on Dec 2, 2022
24-Bit 96.0 kHz - Stereo -
Et la lune descend sur le temple qui fut (Orch. Colin Matthews)
Classical - Released by Halle Concerts Society on Jun 26, 2020
24-Bit 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Symphony No. 9 in E Minor: III. Scherzo: Allegro pesante
Symphonic Music - Released by Halle Concerts Society on Apr 15, 2022
24-Bit 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Tabakova: Concerto for Viola and Strings: Light
Classical - Released by Halle Concerts Society on Sep 29, 2023
24-Bit 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Les soirs illuminés par l'ardeur du charbon, L.150 (Arr. by Colin Matthews)
Classical - Released by Halle Concerts Society on Sep 2, 2019
24-Bit 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Images: IIa. Ibéria - Par les rues et par les chemins
Classical - Released by Halle Concerts Society on Jun 12, 2020
24-Bit 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Songs of Travel: I. The Vagabond (Orch. Ralph Vaughan Williams)
Halle, Sir Mark Elder, Neal Davies
Classical - Released by Halle Concerts Society on Sep 4, 2020
24-Bit 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Tabakova: Earth Suite: Timber & Steel
Classical - Released by Halle Concerts Society on Sep 22, 2023
24-Bit 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Elgar: Symphony No. 2 in E-Flat Major: II. Larghetto
Symphonic Music - Released by Halle Concerts Society on Apr 19, 2024
24-Bit 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Six Songs from A Shropshire Lad (Orchestrated by Roderick Williams): No. 6, Is my team ploughing?
Halle, Sir Mark Elder, Roderick Williams
Vocal Music (Secular and Sacred) - Released by Halle Concerts Society on Oct 28, 2022
24-Bit 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Elgar: Symphony No. 1 in A-Flat Major: I. Andante nobilmente e semplice - Allegro
Symphonic Music - Released by Halle Concerts Society on Apr 26, 2024
24-Bit 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Keep Pushin’ (Missy Elliott Remix) [From the Original Motion Picture “The Color Purple”]
Film Soundtracks - Released by gamma. on Dec 15, 2023
24-Bit 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
The Joy of Earth (Orchestrated by Roderick Williams)
Halle, Sir Mark Elder, Roderick Williams
Vocal Music (Secular and Sacred) - Released by Halle Concerts Society on Oct 7, 2022
24-Bit 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Symphonie n°9
Classical - Released by Halle Concerts Society on Oct 5, 2009
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
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So You Must Be Dead
Rock - Released by Wintown Records on Jun 23, 2023
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Job: Scene II. Satan’s Dance of Triumph
Classical - Released by Halle Concerts Society on Sep 18, 2020
24-Bit 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Job: Scene I. Introduction
Classical - Released by Halle Concerts Society on Aug 21, 2020
24-Bit 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
The Pulley (Orchestrated by Roderick Williams)
Halle, Sir Mark Elder, Roderick Williams
Vocal Music (Secular and Sacred) - Released by Halle Concerts Society on Oct 21, 2022
24-Bit 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Siegfried: Act III Prologue - Wanderer's Call
Halle, Sir Mark Elder, Iain Paterson
Opera - Released by Halle Concerts Society on May 24, 2019
24-Bit 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
The Soldier's Tale, Pt. 1: The Soldier's March
Classical - Released by Halle Concerts Society on Jan 20, 2023
24-Bit 48.0 kHz - Stereo