Page 175 - Media Coverage Book - 75th Aldeburgh Festival 2024

01 June 2024

Hallé orchestra offers a magnificent farewell to

Sir Mark Elder, plus the best June concerts

There wasn’t a dry eye in the packed house for Sir Mark Elder’s last concert in front of the home
crowd as music director of the Hallé
Ivan Hewett1 June 2024 • 3:09pm

Sir Mark Elder with the Hallé orchestra CREDIT: Bill Lam

Hallé orchestra, Bridgewater Hall ★★★★★

“Any sort of marriage is tricky”, declared Sir Mark Elder from the podium at the end of his farewell
concert in Manchester, as he looked back over 24 years of being married to the Hallé orchestra as
its music director. “But we’ve always worked to achieve the absolute best we could do.” Anyone
who’s followed the orchestra over that time, as I have, knows that “the best” this team has achieved
has been as good as any team anywhere. The performances of Wagner’s Ring cycle, of numerous
new works, and above all of British symphonies, have been among the peaks of music-making in
these islands.

However the achievements Elder is clearly most proud of are the various youth choirs created to
weave the orchestra into the life of the city. Two of them were right behind him as he spoke: the
Hallé Youth and Children’s Choirs, alongside the main Hallé Choir. The body of singers was so big
it actually spilled out of the choir stall into the adjoining rows. And what an incredible ear-
drenching sound they made in Timotheus, Bacchus and Cecilia, the work composed especially for
the occasion by Sir James MacMillan.