Toby the Tenor

Written on 22nd July, 2024

I went to Sir Mark Elder’s last concert as chief conductor of the Hallé Orchestra last night. It was a great Prom. Sir James MacMillan’s Timotheus, Bacchus and Cecilia, a new piece I happened to hear at its premiere a year ago in Cincinnati, conducted then by Marin Alsop. It was followed by Mahler’s 5th Symphony. 

I’m not writing a blog to be a critic. I want to share some thoughts about what Sir Mark has achieved during his twenty-five year tenure with the Hallé. 

In 2000, when he took over from Kent Nagano as music director, Sir Mark inherited an orchestra with an excellent new home at the Bridgewater Hall but lacking identity and saddled with debt. 

Sir Mark, being one of British music’s great communicators, immediately set about getting to know his players individually, learning about their skills and personalities. He then set about learning about the great history of the orchestra and its proud audience. He put down roots in Manchester, acquiring a home-from-home close to the hall and allowed himself to be embraced by the city as an honorary Mancunian. 

He put an emphasis on raising the standard of the Hallé Chorus and brought the great C19th and early C20th choral works back to the centre of the orchestra’s core repertoire. He made the orchestra into Elgar specialists, bringing top singers to Manchester to perform and record Elgar’s choral masterpieces. The orchestra also took on bold semi-staged performances of large operatic works and the Bach Passions, all gaining the kind of coverage in the press most of us can only dream of. 

Reviews were noticeably and consistently glowing, even to those of us who lived down in London. It seemed, at times the centre of gravity in musical Britain had shifted to Manchester. The audiences grew and it wasn’t long before the finances of the orchestra were stabilised. Sir Mark’s contract was renewed in 2005 for another five years then for another five years to 2015 and then another five years to “at least 2020”. 

When Covid hit in March 2020, I was due to perform Beethoven’s cantata Christus am Ölberg (Christ on the Mount of Olives) just before Easter. It was cancelled when lockdown was announced but, unlike any of my cancelled contracts in continental Europe, the US or Japan, the Hallé honoured their contract, paying out at Mark’s bidding, so I believe. 

It was a remarkable act of kindness and a godsend for a freelance musician like me for whom rescue packages and furlough were a thing of fantasy. 

Last night I listened to Sir Mark’s well judged farewell speech after the Mahler. He didn’t mention his achievements with the orchestra. He drew our attention to the value of communion with music when other things are so uncertain. He then simply thanked the Proms, the audience and the orchestra and turned to the Hallé for the last time to conduct Elgar as their music director.