Britain's oldest professional symphony orchestra, in a concert hall that floats on two thousand tonnes of springs.
Charles Hallé was a German pianist who came to Manchester in 1848 as a refugee from the revolutions, found the local orchestra unbearable, and built a better one. The Hallé gave its first concert under that name in 1858 and is the oldest professional symphony orchestra in the United Kingdom.
It played in the Free Trade Hall — built on the site of Peterloo, and named for the Anti-Corn Law campaign — for well over a century, under conductors including Hans Richter, who premiered Elgar, and John Barbirolli, who is the one Manchester still talks about.
The building
The Free Trade Hall’s acoustics were much loved and structurally the building was finished. The Hallé moved in 1996 to the Bridgewater Hall, purpose-built at a cost of £42 million and opened by the Queen.
It has one genuinely remarkable feature. The entire 22,500-tonne structure sits on around 280 giant steel springs and rubber bearings, so that it is not physically touching the ground it stands on.
This is because the Metrolink runs directly past. Without the isolation, every tram would be audible in the middle of a slow movement. Stand outside, watch a tram go by, then go in and listen to a pianissimo.
The organ has 5,500 pipes and is used far more than most concert-hall organs.
The acoustic is clear, quite dry, and admired by orchestras. Some listeners find it unforgiving — it hides nothing at all, which is a compliment to the room and occasionally not to the performance.
The programme
The Hallé is the resident orchestra, with a full season from September to July.
The BBC Philharmonic is also Manchester-based and plays here, as does the Manchester Camerata. Between them the city has more professional orchestral music than anywhere in Britain outside London.
There is also jazz, folk, film-with-live-score, comedy and touring popular music.
Tickets
Cheaper than the equivalent in London by a wide margin. Choir seats and the upper circle are inexpensive; under-30 and student schemes cut prices further.
The Hallé’s own venue at St Peter’s, a converted church in Ancoats, hosts smaller concerts and rehearsals and is sometimes open to the public — worth checking if you want to hear the orchestra without a full concert ticket.
Society food hall is on the same square, which makes the pre-concert meal easy.
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