Saturday 11 April, 7.30pm
Pops: Singin’ in the Rain: A Tribute to Gene Kelly

Join Broadway maestro Larry Blank and a trio of star vocalists in a tribute to Hollywood’s greatest song and dance man, Gene Kelly. Performed by the full forces of the Hallé, these orchestrations and arrangements are some of the best ever written and are an absolute pleasure to hear. The perfect celebration of one of the finest men in cinema, movie and musical history.

The programme includes:
Get Happy
’SWonderful
New York, New York
An American In Paris (Overture)
Nice Work If You Can Get It
Embraceable You
It Had To Be You
Before The Parade Passes By
Good Morning
You Are My Lucky Star
Singin’ In The Rain

Larry Blank conductor | Matthew Ford vocalist

Tickets from £19 (including £2 booking fee)
Box Office 0161 907 9000
PwC under 26 tickets available

 

Thursday 16 April, 7.30pm
Thursday Series
Brahms Academic Festival Overture           
Tarik O’Regan A Celestial Map of the Sky: 1515    
Holst The Planets      

Sir Mark Elder conductor
Ladies of the Hallé Choir | Hallé Youth Choir | Manchester Grammar School Choir

A very special event celebrating the 500th birthday of Manchester Grammar School. How better to begin than with Brahms’s Academic Festival Overture, his cheerful medley of student songs? To mark its quincentenary, the school has commissioned an exciting new work from one of the UK’s leading composers, Tarik O’Regan. A setting of poems inspired by the stars, his fast-paced A Celestial Map of the Sky: 1515 not only has MGS’s year of foundation in its title but will also be performed by massed vocal forces, including the school’s choir. The cosmic theme continues with a great masterpiece by a schoolteacher, Gustav Holst’s The Planets. From the apocalyptic brutality of Mars to the mysterious light of Neptune, Holst’s music is simply out of this world!

Tickets from £13 (including £2 booking fee)
Box Office 0161 907 9000
PwC under 26 tickets available
£5 student tickets available

 

Wednesday 22 April, 2.15pm
Thursday 23 and Sunday 26 April, 7.30pm
Opus One Concerts

Boccherini/Berio Ritirata notturna di Madrid
Mendelssohn Violin Concerto
Mahler Symphony No.1

Markus Stenz conductor | Simone Lamsma violin

Markus Stenz and the Hallé begin with Luciano Berio’s joyful take on a piece by the eighteenth-century composer Luigi Boccherini. The latter’s ‘Ritirata notturna di Madrid’, a delightful evocation of night time on the streets of the Spanish capital, was so popular in his day that Boccherini transcribed it for four different instrumental combinations. In 1975 Berio ‘mixed’ those four versions in this enjoyably disconcerting arrangement. After her stunning Hallé debut last season, the superb Simone Lamsma returns to perform Mendelssohn’s much-loved Violin Concerto, a work that never fails to delight. Mahler believed that ‘a symphony must be like the world – it must contain everything.’ With its birdsong, fanfares and Jewish funeral music, his glorious First Symphony pretty much does just that, and its conclusion is one of the most uplifting ever written.

Tickets from £13 (including £2 booking fee)
Box Office 0161 907 9000
PwC under 26 tickets available
£5 student tickets available for the Wednesday matinee and Sunday

 


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The Halle Orchestra.  Image credit to Russel Hart.