I was first introduced to the Hallé around 1960, I would be about ten or eleven, when I was taken to a concert in Manchester by a great-aunt and great-uncle. I have little recollection of the event, I think it was English composers, but I do remember being fascinated by Sir John Barbirolli and the passion he brought to his conducting. It was the only time I saw him conduct live. I would love to say that the experience led me to a love of classical music and the beginning of my education in this direction. Sadly, I have to report it didn’t. This was the beginning of the sixties, and like Mae West’s ‘Snow White’, I drifted, into an appreciation of rock and pop, the Stones, the Beatles and the Kinks; and all the swinging activity that went with it. By the early seventies, I hadn’t even been to an opera. Years later I did find myself in possession of a recording of Madama Butterfly, with Barbirolli conducting the Rome Opera Orchestra; the finest recording of Butterfly I think there has ever been. Every nuance of every phrase is lovingly teased out of the score, helped by a marvellous cast, headed by Renata Scotto in top form.
All these memories came back to me last night in Hull City Hall, as the Hallé tuned up. It was my first live encounter with the Hallé for over fifty years. I don’t know why, but I still get a childish pleasure from listening to an orchestra tuneing; it amazes me that all that discordant noise ends at a signal from one of the violins in one clean pure note. Then a brief pause and the applause started signaling the arrival of tonight’s conductor. Mr Gourlay bounded across the stage and onto the podium, whilst the energy levels in the auditorium soared. He smiled, bowed, beamed, turned and plunged straight into Strauss’s tone poem, Don Juan.
I was stunned at how young Andrew Gourlay is. Now it was an older man (still not particularly educated in the ways of classical music) watching a younger expert. How he enthused audience and orchestra alike as he took in his stride all the complexities of this piece, and how lovingly he drew out the more subtle nuances of the phrasing whilst never letting the energy lapse for the more powerful passages. Altogether a triumph for the opening of the concert.
After a re-shuffling of the orchestra, Gourlay took us into the Bruch Violin Concerto with Sophia Jaffé as the soloist. This was played so beautifully and with such intense emotion, the applause of the audience was such that we were given a Bach solo from Jaffé as a reward. Feeling slightly dazed, I left the auditorium in the interval to share a cigarette with Queen Victoria in the main square and recover my breath.
The Humperdinck Overture to Hansel and Gretel was a great way to start the second half of the concert, although my mind, I’m sorry to say, was already anticipating the Mendelssohn ‘Reformation’ Symphony. This Gourlay introduced with a short confident introduction, with the flair of a Diarmaid Macculloch, to the reformation background of the piece. This too is a piece of extraordinary beauty, with the final movement picking up all the fervour of Luther’s hymn ‘Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott’. The Hallé played this with real panache, and I loved the echoes of the thirty years war from the brass. The flautist’s haunting solo introduction of Luther’s hymn did make me sit on the edge of my seat.
If you have a chance to catch-up with this tour, do; and remember to take your nieces and nephews; I can’t think of a better introduction to classical music than watching Andrew Gourlay conduct the Hallé.
You can find Andrew Gourlay’s concert schedule here;
& the Hallé’s website here.
