Hallé Huw Watkins

Fanfare for the Hallé · Symphony No. 2 · Concerto for Orchestra

Hallé Orchestra Sir Mark Elder CH CBE conductor emeritus

NMC Recordings CD HLL 7569
https://halle.co.uk/


There is something quietly poignant about a disc whose two largest works were conceived in enforced isolation yet speak so consistently of communal joy. Huw Watkins composed his Second Symphony and the brief but brilliantly judged Fanfare for the Hallé during the darkest months of Covid lockdown, and it is a mark of his stature as a composer that both works transcend their origins to emerge as music of genuine substance and celebratory conviction.

The Fanfare opens the disc with disarming modesty. Two muted, canonic trumpets, placed on either side of the hall, feel their way forward tentatively, as though uncertain of their welcome — a telling metaphor, perhaps, for musicians rediscovering the stage after months of silence. Watkins builds with gathering purpose, the Hallé brass section superbly balanced throughout, until the music arrives at a sequence of blazing chorales that feel not merely festive but genuinely defiant. It is an ideal curtain-raiser: concise, purposeful, and emotionally truthful about the mood of the moment.

The Second Symphony, a joint commission from the Hallé and BBC National Orchestra of Wales, received its world premiere in a digital-only broadcast in April 2021 under Sir Mark Elder, with its first live Hallé performance following at the Bridgewater Hall in March 2023. Watkins has expressed his unwavering commitment to a positive conclusion for the work, a determination that permeates the symphony from its very first bars — an atmospheric emergence from fragmentary cells on flutes and clarinets, juxtaposed against divided, muted strings, pianissimo, punctuated by moments of near silence that evoke the release of winter's breath as it gives way to spring.

Watkins is a master orchestrator, and the slow movement is particularly impressive: a sustained quiet that builds with inexorable logic to a crescendo enriched by bells before subsiding into something genuinely dreamlike. Woodwind and brass are deployed with that characteristic colouration that has become a Watkins signature—functional and expressive at the same time, never decorative for its own sake. The finale accumulates tension from a quiet opening, piling ingredient upon ingredient with the confidence of a chef who knows precisely what the dish requires, until the music ends in an enigmatic blaze of glory that feels, rightly, like a door thrown open.

If the symphony is the disc's emotional heart, the Concerto for Orchestra is its crown. In his first concert as Conductor Emeritus of the Hallé, Sir Mark Elder conducted the premiere. The work gracefully embraces the occasion, celebrating a relationship rather than a valediction. It embodies the rhythmic deftness and orchestral intelligence that have characterised the Elder–Hallé partnership over decades. Every section of the orchestra is showcased with affection and wit; the percussion writing, in particular—crotales, glockenspiel, tubular bells, and side drums—adds layers of colour that are beguiling rather than showy.

The central slow movement, the longest of the three, is the work's finest achievement. Something in its enveloping stillness recalls the close of Copland's Appalachian Spring—the same quality of earned tranquillity, the same sense that the music has arrived somewhere deeply worth reaching. Harp and celeste shimmer through the finale before the full orchestra reasserts itself in a conclusion of joy. The audience response, audible on this recording, was entirely warranted.

Elder's direction throughout is meticulous without ever becoming mannered; the phrasing is alive, the dynamics precisely weighted, and the playing of the Hallé consistently luminous. If Huw Watkins remains less widely known than his gifts deserve, this disc is an authoritative and thoroughly persuasive introduction.