Under its Music Director, Sir Mark Elder, the Hallé has entered a new golden era, marked by imaginatively themed programming and the successful launch of its own record label. It has received awards from BBC Music Magazine and Gramophone magazines, and in 2022 it won a South Bank Sky Arts Award for its performance of Huw Watkins’s Second Symphony, which the orchestra commissioned and premiered as part of its 2021 online season, having already won the same prize in 2018 for its performance of Schoenberg’s Gurrelieder with the BBC Philharmonic. Conductor Kahchun Wong has been announced as the orchestra's new Principal Conductor and Artistic Advisor, starting in 2024-25 with a five-year contract.
The orchestra's 2023-24 season at The Bridgewater Hall will be Sir Mark Elder's final as Music Director and will see him conduct Ravel's Daphnis et Chloé and Mother Goose, Rossini's Stabat Mater, and Verdi's Simon Boccanegra, with a final concert in June 2024 featuring a specially commissioned premiere of James MacMillan’s Timotheus, Bacchus and Cecilia with the Hallé choirs, and Mahler's Symphony No.5. Thomas Adès will also start a two-year residency, conducting but also performing in the popular Chamber Music Series at Hallé St Peter’s. Guest soloists and conductors will include Benjamin Grosvenor, Jess Gillam, Stephen Hough, Masabane Cecilia Rangwanasha, and the 2023 Terence Judd – Hallé Award winner Tom Borrow, while incoming Principal Conductor Kahchun Wong will conduct Fauré's Requiem.
In March 2023 the second edition of the Siemens Hallé International Conductors Competition saw 24-year-old Euan Shields win a two-year post as Assistant Conductor of the Hallé and Music Director of the Hallé Youth Orchestra.
For information on the orchestra's recordings on the Hallé CD label
