Wigglesworth, Shostakovich and more Manchester

The Hallé Orchestra's 2014/15 season in Manchester will include all six of Shostakovich's concerts. Written throughout his career, a pair each for violin, cello and piano, the works form a remarkable survey with Viktoria Mullova playing the First Violin Concerto (9/10/2014), Henning Kraggerud plays the Second Violin Concerto (15/1/2015), Jian Wang is the soloist in the First Cello Concerto (12/2/2015), Alisa Weilerstein (winner of the BBC Music Magazine's Recording of the Year Award in 2014) is playing the Second Cello Concerto (19/2/2015). Benjamin Grosvenor will be playing both the piano concertos in one concert (21/5/2015).

Also in the season will be the world premiere of Tarik O'Regan's A Celestial Map of the Sky: 1515 conducted by Sir Mark Elder. The work was written for the Hallé Youth Choir and young voices from Manchester Grammar, and is being performed in a concert celebrating 500 years of the school (16/4/2015). Another contemporary work is Brett Dean's Testament which was inspired by Beethoven's First Symphony and the Hallé under Estonian conductor Olari Elts will be performing both works (23/10/2014).

Looking further ahead, from September 2015, composer/conductor Ryan Wigglesworth has been appointed the orchestra's Principal Guest Conductor.  Wigglesworth, who hails from Sheffield where the Hallé also performs, first worked with the orchestra in 2010 on recording of Harrison Birtwistle’s orchestral works for the NMC label. The recording won that year’s Gramophone Award for Contemporary Record of the Year.

Further information and the full programme from the Halle website.