Review: Hallé: Sheffield City Hall 80th Anniversary Concert

Thirties audiences liked orchestral music to be big and colourful, and the massive architecture of the City Hall reflected their taste.

This was the age of the gaudy Beecham and Barbirolli, both of whom conducted regularly at the City Hall in the early days – although Beecham was floridly robust in his condemnation of the two huge stone lions that once graced the stage.

The Hallé, who have played big and colourful at many a City Hall concert, sounded uncomfortable at first in the 80th anniversary task of recreating that taste.

Richard Strauss’ Don Juan – a sumptuous post-Wagnerian single movement orchestral “opera” – was robbed of its excitement by loose 
ensemble which was not improved by conductor Sir Mark Elder’s occasional deployment of a double downbeat.

Although Wagner’s Meistersinger Prelude had no such technical problems, it lacked grandeur.

Boldness was eventually achieved in Rossini’s William Tell and Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overtures, and the orchestral accompaniment 
to Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin Letter Scene was outstanding.

Soloist Lesley Garrett was in fine voice – characteristically coquettish in Canteloube’s Auvergne songs and exquisitely agonised in the Onegin aria – which augurs well for her return to opera next year at Leeds in Poulenc’s La Voix Humaine.