Tag Archives: Hallé Orchestra

On Record – Hallé / Thomas Adès: Adès, Leith, Marsey

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Thomas Adès Shanty (2020); Dawn (2020); Tower (2021); Aquifer (2024)
Oliver Leith Cartoon Sun (2024)
William Marsey Man with Limp Wrist (2023)

Hallé / Thomas Adès

Hallé CDHLL7567 68’20”
Producer Jeremy Hayes Engineers Steve Portnoi, Niall Gault, Edward Cittanova

Live performances at Bridgewater Hall, Manchester, 21-24 November 2024

Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse

What’s the story?

This latest release on the Hallé’s label focusses on music by or conducted by Thomas Adès during his 2023-25 residency with this orchestra, with works by two younger composers he has championed heard alongside several of his own pieces – including a major UK premiere.

What’s the music like?

Of the three shorter pieces by Adès, Shanty – Over the Sea unfolds as cumulative variants on an archetypal-sounding sea-shanty, with all this may imply in terms of transcending captivity and longing for freedom. Subtitled ‘Chacony for Orchestra at Any Distance’, Dawn conveys in spatial terms a concentric evolution toward a likely epiphany that yet remains out of reach. By contrast, Tower – For Frank Geary envisages a building near Arles by the Canadian-born American architect in terms of a bracing and increasingly effervescent fanfare for 14 trumpets.

Of those works by younger composers, Man with Limp Wrist finds William Marsey drawing on paintings by Salman Toor for a sequence of eight ‘scenes’; the first seven of which are as succinctly descriptive as the titles that inspired them. The eighth piece, which takes its name from the titular canvas, brings culmination of sorts through its collision of old tunes (mainly hymns) in music as feels arresting if curiously uninvolving. Much the same could be said of Cartoon Sun by Oliver Leith, a detailed evocation of which is provided by the composer and whose premise that ‘‘Everything looks different under the sun’’ is related over three sections – the first two relatively brief and primarily gestural, the lengthier third building cumulative intensity which dissipates towards the end as if to confirm that nothing is ever what it seems.

Premiered in Munich by the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, Aquifer is Simon Rattle’s third major commission from Adès (after Asyla for the City of Birmingham Symphony then Tevot for the Berlin Philharmonic). Its title referring to ‘‘a geological structure which can transmit water’’, the piece unfolds across seven continuous sections, though the outline of a sonata design can be sensed not as the dynamic means of change but rather (and more appropriately) as a fluid construct from which ideas emerge and mutate – as might water as it passes between different vessels. In terms of content, it ranges widely over styles and allusions before culminating in a vivid while hardly epiphanic coda, yet its overall cohesion along with its assured handling of sizable orchestral forces ensures an impact which audibly commended it to all those present.

Does it all work?

Whether or not it does so is much of the fascination. The works by Marsey and Leith offer no mean indication in terms of where these composers (in their mid-30s) are headed, while those by Adès afford intrigues aplenty. Neither is there any doubt as to the commitment of the Hallé in presenting these pieces to best advantage, nor of Adès’s ability to get the most out of these players. If a sense persists of his music having an essence that beguiles more than it conceals in intrinsic substance, no living composer has reinvented the wheel quite so skilfully as Adès.

Is it recommended?

Yes, not least as the programme makes for a cohesive and engaging listen throughout. Sound makes the most of Bridgewater Hall’s evident clarity and spaciousness, with annotations as informative as usual from this source. Adès is undeniably a defining presence in new music.

Listen / Buy

You can explore purchase options at the Hallé online shop

For more on the artists featured, click on the names to read more about The Hallé and album conductor Thomas Adès – and click on the names for Thomas Adès as a composer, Oliver Leith and William Marsey

Published post no.2,629 – Sunday 17 August 2025

On Record – Hallé / Kahchun Wong: Bruckner: Symphony no.9 (fourth movement revised by Dr. John A. Phillips) (Hallé)

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Bruckner, ed. Kito Sakaya Symphony no.9 in D minor WAB109 (1887-96)
with performing edition of finale by Nicole Samale, John A. Phillips, Benjamin-Gunnar Cohrs and Giuseppe Mazzuca (1983-2012) as revised by John A. Phillips (2021-22)

Hallé / Kahchun Wong

Hallé CDHLD7566 [two discs 88’24’’]
Producer Steve Portnoi Engineers Tony Wass, Edward Cittanova

Recorded 26 October 2024 at Bridgewater Hall, Manchester

Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse

What’s the story?

The Hallé furthers its association with principal conductor and artistic advisor Kahchun Wong in this recording of Bruckner’s Ninth Symphony, the finale heard in a new edition prepared by John A. Phillips as the ostensible culmination of a process extending back across four decades.

What’s the music like?

Although his introductory note leaves no doubt as to his advocacy for Bruckner Nine, Wong’s approach is not an unqualified success overall. Doubts such as they are centre on the opening two movements, the first of which lacks that sustained inevitability and cumulative intensity necessary to make its extensive span cohere. Aptly contrasted in themselves, its three themes follow on each other without establishing any greater continuity and while the approach to its development yields tangible ominousness, the ensuing climax conveys less than the ultimate terror, though its coda does attain a fearsome majesty. Wong’s take on the second movement succeeds best in its trio’s speculative flights of fancy, which only makes the relative stolidity and emotional disengagement of its Scherzo sections the more surprising and disappointing.

The highlight is undoubtedly the Adagio. Without intervening unduly in its evolution, Wong ensures cohesion over a movement manifestly riven if not outright fractured by the starkness of its thematic contrasts. The journey towards its seismic culmination feels as eventful as it is absorbing and while that climax is less shattering than it can be, the clarity afforded its dense harmonies could not be bettered. Wong is mindful, moreover, not to allow its coda to broaden into an extended postlude but instead to keep this moving in anticipation of what is to follow.

This is hardly the place to go into the whys or wherefores of the ‘SPCM’ edition of the Finale. Given his intensive research into the issues of what is extant and what Bruckner intended for the crowning movement of his grandest symphonic design, Phillips is ideally placed in making his revisions to a completion which renders some striking yet often disparate material from a focussed and convincing perspective. The main alterations are those made to its latter stages, more streamlined and with less overt rhetoric than in the 2011 revision as recorded by Simon Rattle (Warner) though, to this listener at least, the 2008 revision as recorded by Friedemann Layer (Musikalische Akademie) still remains the most convincing in context. Whatever else, Wong conveys the extent of this gripping torso right through to the elation of its apotheosis.

Does it all work?

How well this performance succeeds depends on how one judges the necessity of that closing movement and the persuasiveness of Wong’s interpretation as a whole. Pertinent comparison might be made with the Hallé’s previous recording (also on its own label) – Cristian Mandeal drawing a response that, in the first two movements, has a power and intensity in advance of this newcomer. Interesting he should eschew the finale while instilling into those three earlier movements a sense of completion which, whether or not intentionally, is its own justification.

Is it recommended?

It is, whatever the reservations here expressed. This is not the final word on a four-movement Bruckner Nine any more than on Wong’s evolving interpretation though, with realistic sound alongside Phillips’s detailed while informative annotations, it is evidently a mandatory listen.

Listen / Buy

You can read more about this release and explore purchase options at the Hallé website

Published post no.2,518 – Wednesday 30 April 2025

Joanne Lunn, Hallé Orchestra / Ryan Wigglesworth – Mozart & Mahler

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Joanne Lunn (soprano, above), Hallé Orchestra / Ryan Wigglesworth (conductor and piano)

Mozart Ch’io mi scordi di te, K505 (1786)
Mozart Symphony no.34 in C major, K338 (1780)
Mahler Symphony no.4 in G major (1892, 1899-1900, rev. 1901-10)

Bridgewater Hall, Manchester; Wednesday 8 November 2017

From 24 November you will be able to listen to a BBC Radio 3 broadcast of this programme – link to follow

Written by Ben Hogwood

This was a nicely programmed afternoon concert, an attractive set of pieces with a Viennese connection that could initially be seen as lightweight but which were anything but.

First up was an inventive choice, Mozart’s standalone concert aria Ch’io Mi Scordi De Te?, a tribute to the soprano Nancy Storace. Written for soprano with piano and reduced orchestral forces, the composer used a text attributed to Lorenzo Da Ponte, who wrote the libretto for Don Giovanni, The Marriage of Figaro and Così fan tutte. Joanne Lunn sang with great purity of tone, with her high notes particularly well-judged, while Ryan Wigglesworth (below) directed with sensitivity from the piano in the tender duet sections, where the orchestra felt like eavesdroppers.

This was followed by an extremely tasteful reading of Mozart’s Symphony no.34. This is a work that doesn’t get to poke its head above the parapet as much as its neighbouring ‘named’ symphonies in the composer’s output such as the Haffner and Linz. Wigglesworth chose his speeds well, so that the lovely Viennese textures were just the right density for Mozart’s lighter (but not lightweight) melodies. The energetic Hallé strings went well with the more graceful woodwind, particularly in the joyful finale, while the serene slow movement was also a highlight.

Mahler’s Symphony no.4 is, on face value, his most ‘classical’, following traditions established by Schubert and the like, innovatively adding a soprano for the final movement, a child’s vision of heaven. Wigglesworth’s interpretation was carefully thought out and extremely well played, the woodwind of the Hallé rising to the considerable challenges posed by this deceptively difficult symphony.

On the surface, the Fourth is grace and charm personified, but the cracks often show in the music, the lower you go in the orchestra. The first movement was crisp and clear, a bright outdoors scene beautifully painted, but a chill shadow was cast in the second movement thanks to leader Paul Barritt’s solo contribution on a specially tuned violin, not to mention those ominous rumblings in the bass. The slow movement had a beautiful serenity but the feeling of slight unease persisted, quelled briefly by a magnificent evocation of the gates of heaven, Wigglesworth securing rich, bright colours from the orchestra.

Lunn returned to the stage for the child’s vision of heaven, a radiant encounter but with the macabre orchestral elements present and correct. Wigglesworth consistently found the delicacy of Mahler’s scoring, as well as the ghoulish apparitions that are never far from the surface of this enchanting piece.

While this concert is not yet available online, you can listen to a Spotify playlist of the works performed below: