Hallé

The Hallé's new recordings reaffirm its thriving Sibelian tradition, matching Sir Mark Elder's measured, often massive readings with playing excellent even in these predominantly live performances…their... — BBC Music Magazine, May 2016, 4 out of 5 stars More…

It concludes Elder and the Hallé’s cycle of Vaughan Williams’s symphonies, one which has been consistently gripping in its trenchant honesty and patient empathy for the composer’s idiom. — BBC Music Magazine, July 2022, 4 out of 5 stars More…

Sir Mark Elder's new recordings, one in studio, the other live from the Bridgewater Hall, are still very much in the British Sibelius vein established by Barbirolli, Anthony Collins and Alexander... — BBC Music Magazine, April 2009, 4 out of 5 stars More…

The outstanding performances here come from the Hallé and their music director. With quality playing from all departments, Wagner’s complex orchestral timbres are carefully presented, while... — BBC Music Magazine, August 2019, 4 out of 5 stars More…

Elder’s Hallé are particularly good at catching the strongly English flavour of the work, and its umbilical connections to folk dance. The playing is sharply etched and bristling with confidence...Even... — BBC Music Magazine, December 2020, 5 out of 5 stars More…

…Elder maintains a tension and sense of belief that The Music Makers very seldom receives. Beautifully balanced and superbly paced, this deeply sympathetic and intensely-felt reading is perhaps... — BBC Music Magazine, September 2005, 5 out of 5 stars More…

The three panels of the orchestral Images each inhabit different worlds, testing  any orchestra’s range of colour and style. The Hallé, in the latest instalment of their Debussy series with... — BBC Music Magazine, September 2020, 4 out of 5 stars More…

Matthews's transcription of Les soirs illuminés par l’ardeur du charbon...is both extremely beautiful and very fine...The disc’s main raisons d’être, however, are Nocturnes and La damoiselle... — Gramophone Magazine, January 2020 More…

A reading [of No. 4] in which tempos in general are on the ample side so that the first and third movements fail quite to sustain tension…This is a pity since the greatest care has evidently... — BBC Music Magazine, May 2020, 3 out of 5 stars (Performance) / 4 out of 5 stars (Recording) More…

The throw themselves so fully into the texture and colour of the piece it becomes almost visual - captured are not only the hansom cabs, street-sellers' cries, Cockney mouth organs and accordions... — Classic FM Magazine, February 2012, 4 out of 5 stars More…