Elgar Festival: Sir Mark Elder's 70th birthday celebrations at the Hallé

The Hallé begins a mini-festival celebrating the 70th birthday of its music director, Sir Mark Elder, today, 9 March 2017. This evening the orchestra starts a short Elgar Festival at Bridgewater Hall. Tonight's concert (9 March) features Elgar's Symphony No. 1, alongside a number of shorter works with the overture Froissart, Pomp and Circumstance March No. 3 and the incidental music from Grania and Diarmaid. 

On Saturday March 11, 2017, Sir Mark conducts the orchestra in Gerard McBurney’s ‘Beyond the Score’ presentation exploring the Enigma Variations. With the Hallé on stage throughout, singers, actors (including Samuel West as Elgar) and film extracts will tell the story of Elgar’s iconic work, followed by a complete performance. Finally on Sunday 12 March, Sir Mark conducts a performance of Elgar's oratorio The Dream of Gerontius with David Butt Philip, Sasha Cooke and Iain Paterson, the Hallé Choir and the Hallé Youth Choir.

Further ahead on 4 June, the orchestra's 2016/17 season finishes with Sir Mark conducting Schoenberg's mammoth Gurrelieder with a strong cast featuring Brandon Jovanovich, Emily Magee, Alice Coote, Graham Clark, Johan Reuter and Sir Thomas Allen, and an orchestra combining the Hallé and the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra.



Full details from the Hallé website.