From New York to Verona and Spain, the Hallé’s upcoming concerts at The Bridgewater Hall take in everything from classic jazz to radical minimalism – via the greatest love story ever told.
The Hallé begins February with a survey of music by Steve Reich, one of the most original and influential composers of the last 70+ years – in a series of three concerts directed by one of his greatest champions, virtuoso Scottish percussionist Colin Currie.
“When I first heard Colin Currie do Drumming, my jaw dropped,” says Reich. “I thought, ‘This is wonderful’ – and also, ‘I wanna kill these guys! You’re better than we are!’” Reich and Currie have since struck up a close working relationship, capped by Currie’s hugely acclaimed recording of Reich’s landmark Music for 18 Musicians – and making Currie the perfect choice as conductor for this unmissable Hallé Presents series.
It opens on Thursday 1 February with a concert centred on one of Reich’s relatively few works for full orchestra. The Desert Music is a radiant five-part setting of poetry by William Carlos Williams, rooted in what Reich sees as the tension “between what words mean and how they sound when set to music”. Before it, we’ve two very different works from opposite ends of Reich’s career: Music for Pieces of Wood, born from the composer’s desire to “make music with the simplest possible instruments”; and Music for Ensemble & Orchestra, a magnificent Technicolor tribute to the Baroque era that premiered a month after Reich’s 82nd birthday.
Two nights later, on Saturday 3 February, Currie and the Hallé welcome a very special guest to The Bridgewater Hall. Jonny Greenwood of Radiohead will serve as both soloist and orchestra in Electric Counterpoint, written for a dozen electric and bass guitars – all pre-recorded by Greenwood, who then plays the final part live over the top. One of Reich’s best-loved works, it’s the heart of a programme that ranges across nearly 50 years of the composer’s inimitable sound: from the fiendish, irresistible Clapping Music (1972), in which a simple clapped rhythm moves in and out of phase, to Reich/Richter (2019), which takes inspiration from Gerhard Richter’s shimmeringly beautiful paintings.
There’s more Radiohead at the series’ third concert, taking place on Friday 2 February (now sold out) at Hallé St Peter’s as part of the Hallé’s lunchtime Chamber Series. Radio Rewrite is Reich’s unexpected reworking of two Radiohead songs, Jigsaw Falling Into Place and Everything in Its Right Place – and it’s presented alongside two earlier works, including Music for Mallet Instruments, Voices and Organ, with Currie once more at the helm. Don’t miss this deep dive into the music of perhaps our most important living composer.
It’s hard not to get the blues in February, one of the greyest months of the year – so why not get the Blues instead? The Hallé are bringing a swing to The Bridgewater Hall on Thursday 8 February for a fabulous concert celebrating two distinct but related shades of blue.
The first half spotlights a piece that celebrates its centenary in February 2024. George Gershwin’s flamboyant Rhapsody in Blue was rapturously received at its New York premiere on 12 February 1924, the highlight of a concert bearing the unpromising title of “An Experiment in Modern Music”. And in the last 100 years, it’s come to define the decadent essence of the Jazz Age. Gershwin himself was the pianist at the premiere – and for this centenary celebration, the Hallé is joined by the outstanding James Pearson, pianist and Artistic Director at London’s legendary Ronnie Scott’s.
The second half moves the jazz dial forward 35 years to the best-known and best-selling jazz record of all time – and, perhaps, the best. Recorded across just two springtime sessions in 1959 (less than a mile from Manhattan’s Aeolian Hall, where Rhapsody in Blue had premiered), Miles Davis’s Kind of Blue is the focus for the second half of this concert – but this is a blue of a very different kind.
Guy Barker’s Symphonic Kind of Blue turns Davis’s album on its head, expanding Davis’s indelible sextet recordings into an arrangement for big band and orchestra. Barker, a great British trumpeter and arranger who’s played and scored for everyone from Quincy Jones to Paloma Faith, knows this music inside out – and he’ll be on hand tonight to conduct his orchestrated expansion of the full album.
Miles Davis was no stranger to orchestrated jazz thanks to his longstanding collaboration with arranger Gil Evans – and there’s a connection here with another upcoming Hallé concert. Sketches of Spain, one of the pair’s greatest achievements, was centred on a jazz-inflected version of the adagio from Rodrigo’s Concierto de Aranjuez – but you can hear the original at the Hallé’s next Rush Hour early-evening concert. España offers five delicious musical tapas conducted by Delyana Lazarova, including Chabrier’s titular rhapsody, a suite of music from Bizet’s Carmen and Ravel’s indelible Boléro. The flight leaves on Thursday 7 March at 6pm – don’t be late…
Last but not least, there’s more very welcome springtime sunshine a week or so earlier, when the Hallé takes us to Verona, Italy to tell The Musical Story of Romeo and Juliet. Presenter Tom Redmond joins the Hallé and conductor Maxime Pascal at 12pm on Sunday 25 February for a family-friendly retelling of the greatest love story ever told, illustrated with music from Prokofiev’s famous Romeo and Juliet ballet.
Tickets are available for all Hallé concerts from our What’s on Section.
Written by Will Fulford-Jones