Hallé Orchestra & Sir Mark Elder – Elgar: Symphonies No. 1 & No. 2 (2024)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 01:58:55 minutes | 1,02 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Hallé Concerts Society
Among the first releases on the Hallé recording label, established in 2003, were Elgar’s Symphonies Nos 1 and 2. This recording revisits those works nearly 20 years later, and mark the culmination of Sir Mark Elder’s tenure as Music Director The First Symphony was premiered in the Free Trade Hall, Manchester, in 1908 by the Hallé and its Music Director, Hans Richter to whom the symphony is dedicated. It is a work of astonishing musical and structural mastery which was greeted with worldwide acclaim, receiving one hundred performances in its first year. The musical material demonstrates Elgar’s skill at melody and transformation and presents a wide emotional range. By contrast the Second Symphony, with its deeply personal ‘pilgrimage of a soul’, initially received a more muted reception. However, it came into its own after the end of the first world war when the tone of remembrance and tribute possibly reflected the national mood, in what is now considered to be one of Elgar’s finest works. The digital release of the symphonies is accompanied by a bonus track featuring Colin Matthews’ arrangement of Elgar’s partsong The Prince of Sleep (1925). Matthews presented the arrangement to Mark Elder as a gift to mark the conductor’s 70th birthday in 2017, and as a tribute to Elder’s ‘many splendid Elgar performances’. It also reflects what Matthews has described as ‘ a remarkable privilege to have been an observer of the Hallé’s development over more than twenty years, watching it become, under Mark, one of the finest orchestras not just in the UK but in the world.’
Read more
Sir Mark Elder, Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra, Roderick Williams – Delius: A Mass of Life (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/192 kHz | Time – 01:34:21 minutes | 2,96 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Lawo Classics
Roderick Williams heads up the cast for this new recording of Delius’ A Mass of Life with the Bergen Philharmonic, conducted by Sir Mark Elder. Accompanied by soloists Gemma Summerfield, Claudia Huckle and Bror Magnus Todenes, the Bergen Philharmonic Choir and Edvard Grieg Kor join Collegium Musicum Choir to complete the tour de force needed to perform and record this monumental work.
Read more
Hallé Orchestra & Sir Mark Elder – Wagner: Parsifal (2017)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 04:18:58 minutes | 2,35 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Halle Concerts Society
Following their acclaimed previous Wagner opera releases, Hallé present the re-mastered recording of their 2013 Prom performance, recorded live at the Royal Albert Hall.
“Working with his orchestra, the Hallé, Sir Mark Elder produced an account of this miraculous score which, for a combination of passion and precision, surpassed any other that I have ever heard.”
Michael Tanner, The Spectator, 31 August 2013
Hallé, Sir Mark Elder & Roderick Williams – A Shropshire Lad: English Songs Orchestrated by Roderick Williams (2022)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 01:12:44 minutes | 605 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Halle Concerts Society
This album represents the culmination of what leading British baritone Roderick Williams described as ‘a dream come true’. It features premiere recordings of his orchestrations of songs by Vaughan Williams and other composers associated with him and is released to commemorate those who perished in WWI.
Featuring orchestrations by Williams of his favourite songs from the 20th-century English repertoire this album contains works by Vaughan Williams and composers associated with him. It includes specially commissioned new arrangements of songs by women composers Ina Boyle, Ruth Gipps, Madeleine Dring and Rebecca Clarke.
Read more
Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Sir Mark Elder – Wagner: Lohengrin, WWV 75 (Live) (2017)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 03:30:47 minutes | 3,50 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra
There was no instant click between Richard Wagner and his future opera hero Lohengrin. Having come across the Lohengrin poem amongst the medieval source material for his opera Tannhäuser, he then laid it aside, considering it to be too mystical. But the figure of Lohengrin would not let him go, and he gradually came to see in the mysterious Grail Knight the very essence of a ‘deeply human longing for unconditional love’. Finally, at the spa town of Marienbad during the summer holiday of 1845, inspiration struck: ‘Lohengrin… stood suddenly revealed before me in full armour at the centre of a comprehensive dramatic adaptation of the whole material.’ In no time at all, he had put down on paper a prose sketch of a libretto. …
Read more
Halle, Sir Mark Elder – Vaughan Williams: Symphony No. 7 “Sinfonia Antartica” & Symphony No. 9 (2022)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 01:46:39 minutes | 818 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Halle Concerts Society
Premiered by the Hallé under Sir John Barbirolli in 1953, the Sinfonia antartica originated in Vaughan Williams’ score for the film Scott of the Antarctic. With a highly original scoring (including solo soprano, wordless women’s chorus, organ, piano and extensive percussion section), the work depicts the struggle of man over nature, as epitomized in Captain Scott’s ill-fated expedition to the South Pole. The symphony is characterized with heroic themes, evocative orchestral effects and music which is at turns emotive and powerful.
Read more