Manchester’s The Halle has seven performances lined up for The Bridgewater Hall in November, taking on everything from Mendelssohn to Wagner, and the giants of Jazz to the giants of Nashville.
So, what’s The Halle performing at the Bridgewater Hall in November?
The Hallé Goes to Nashville
Saturday 3 November 7.30pm
Conductor Stephen Bell | Featuring Capital Voices, vocalists
The Hallé holds its first ever celebration of Country and Western! Four of Britain’s leading guest vocalists, including Lance Ellington and Annie Skates, join the Hallé and conductor Stephen Bell for a concert celebrating more than fifty years of legendary County and Western hits:
Dolly Parton 9 to 5
Glen Campbell Wichita Lineman
Dolly Parton and Kenny Rogers Islands In The Stream
Olivia Newton-John Take Me Home, Country Roads
Dolly Parton Jolene
Glen Campbell Galveston
The Eagles Take It Easy
Kenny Rogers The Gambler
Shania Twain Man! I Feel Like A Woman!
Johnny Cash Ring of Fire
Willie Nelson Always On My Mind
Charlie Daniels Band The Devil Went Down To Georgia
John Denver Thank God I’m A Country Boy
Glen Campbell Rhinestone Cowboy
The Eagles Desperado
Bonnie Raitt I Can’t Make You Love Me
Lady Antebellum Need You Now
The Shires Friday Night
Pre-concert event 6:30pm – at The Bridgewater Hall foyer, free to concert ticket holders
Pre-concert foyer entertainment from musicians of the RNCM Popular Music course
Wednesday 7 November, 2.15pm; Thursday 8 November, 7.30pm; and Sunday 11 November, 7.30pm
Elgar In the South (Alassio)
Mendelssohn Piano Concerto No.1
Wagner Lohengrin: Preludes to Act I and Act III
Wagner Die Meistersinger: Suite
Conductor Sir Mark Elder | Featuring Francesco Piemontesi, piano
The programme opens with Elgar’s picturesque overture In the South. Written during an Italian holiday it remains one of the composer’s sunniest works for orchestra. Pianist Francesco Piemontesi’s delicate virtuosity is ideally suited to the first of Mendelssohn’s two glittering piano concertos. The performances also features two contrasting preludes from Lohengrin: in the first, strings gliding as serenely as the swan at the heart of the story, and all the energy and tension below the surface in the second. In a glorious climax, Sir Mark Elder leads through the intimacy and ceremony of Wagner’s great comic masterpiece, Die Meistersinger.
Thursday 15 November, 7.30pm
Schubert Overture: Rosamunde
Beethoven Piano Concerto No.2
Shostakovich Symphony No.10
Conductor Kazushi Ono | Featuring Paul Lewis, piano
Kazushi Ono, a conductor described by Le Figaro as ‘one of the most fascinating musical minds of our era’, contrasts Viennese fantasy with Russian realism.
Schubert’s Rosamunde overture owes a stylistic debt to Beethoven, yet it also contains Schubert’s own personal brand of grace and charm. The incomparable Paul Lewis is soloist in Beethoven’s Second Piano Concerto, a work of ingenuity, lyricism and, ultimately, mischief. Much has been written about Shostakovich’s epic Tenth Symphony: that it took its final shape as a result of the sense of relief occasioned by Stalin’s death; or that its menacing second movement was a portrait of Stalin and the terrors of his regime. Shostakovich simply said that he had ‘wanted to portray human feelings and passions.’ Whatever was meant, it is a remarkably powerful musical journey.
Pre-concert event 6:30pm – in The Bridgewater Hall auditorium, free to concert ticket holders
Professor Fairclough, a cultural historian and Shostakovich expert from the University of Bristol introduces Shostakovich’s Tenth Symphony and its influence on the musical landscape
Giants of Jazz – Take Two
Saturday 24 November, 7.30pm
Erroll Garner Misty
Fats Waller Medley
Thelonious Monk Straight, No Chaser
Duke Ellington Caravan
Jelly Roll Morton King Porter Stomp
Bill Evans Time Remembered
Dave Brubeck Take Five
Meade ‘Lux’ Lewis Honky Tonk Train Blues
Billy Mayerl Marigold
Chick Corea Spain
Conductor Roderick Dunk | Featuring The James Pearson Trio
Following their sell-out success with the Hallé two seasons ago, James Pearson and his Trio take a break from Ronnie Scott’s to perform an all-new programme of jazz classics. Spectacular arrangements for trio and orchestra promise another evening that should not be missed.
Pre-concert event 6:30pm – at The Bridgewater Hall foyer, free to concert ticket holders
Pre-concert foyer entertainment from musicians of the RNCM Popular Music course
Thursday 29 November, 7.30pm
Schoenberg Verklärte Nacht (Transfigured Night)
Satie Parade
Stravinsky The Rite of Spring
Conductor Sir Mark Elder
Sir Mark conducts three highly contrasting masterpieces, all composed within just eighteen years of each other and each in its own way hugely influential. Verklärte Nacht is one of the blazing masterpieces of the Romantic era, a highly melodious affair for string orchestra that expresses Schoenberg’s love for his future wife. Satie’s surreal ballet score Parade is bizarre in the best possible way: its instrumentation includes gun shots, sirens and a typewriter! Pierre Boulez described Stravinsky’s unleashing of his The Rite of Spring upon a scandalised Parisian public in 1913 as ‘an exemplary moment of modernity’. Over one hundred years later, the composer’s extraordinary evocation of pagan fertility rites fully retains its ability to rouse, to excite and to shock.
Pre-concert event 6:30pm – in The Bridgewater Hall auditorium, free to concert ticket holders
Pianist, writer and broadcaster, Peter Hill introduces the evening’s programme focussing on Stravinsky’s extraordinary Rite of Spring
image of The Halle courtesy Russel Hart
