THE Hallé Orchestra is one of Manchester’s symphony orchestras, widely celebrated in the UK, with over 70 players predominantly based in the Bridgewater Hall in the centre of the city.
Ripon Grammar School GCSE and A-Level music students were lucky enough to attend a special schools-only performance by this, the oldest remaining professional orchestra still performing today in the UK, with a history dating back to 1858.
Having left Ripon at 10:15am, we battled Manchester traffic to arrive at our seats, at the front of the ground floor, in good time for the concert, hosted by broadcaster and musician Tom Redmond.
He gave us an introduction to the theme: ‘Orchestra Through the Ages’ and explained that the orchestra was going to mimic the collection of instruments of a range of time periods.
Starting in the Baroque period with just strings and a harpsichord, the orchestra gradually got bigger using more and a wider range of instruments as they played different pieces.They were joined by students from the Royal Northern College of Music performing solos.
The first piece was Badinerie by J. S. Bach and featured the first soloist of the show on the flute. It is a very short piece from the Baroque time period and one from the GCSE specification, so it was great to hear it performed live having studied it in the classroom.
Several other pieces followed after this taking us through the classical period with some Mozart and Hadyn and then into the Romantic period with some Chopin. They then moved onto some Stravinsky and then onto more modern orchestral music before finishing with some film music.
Tom was very entertaining throughout and engaged us by testing our musical skills at several points by asking us questions. At one point the even invited us to perform by singing a melody from one of the pieces with all 2000 music students from across the north of England and the orchestra. However, this was lacking in musical ability despite all the musicians in the room!
Towards the end, with the entire orchestra present, they performed Defying Gravity from the musical Wicked with a voice soloist. This is a very impressive piece and was performed and sung very well. Again, it is in the GCSE specification, so it was amazing to have heard it performed live, having studied the musical aspects in class.
They finished the concert with the Star Wars Main Theme to show the full power of a symphony orchestra playing really powerful, emotive music. This was a great high to end the show on.
We then travelled through Manchester to the Hard Rock Cafe where we had our evening meal consisting of a burger and fries. It was an amazing experience having fun with a bunch of great people. Also at the Hard Rock Cafe, we messed around in the photo booth and bought souvenirs after we’d had food.
We then headed onto the bus home for our post-concert show where we ‘karaoked’ all the way home. Highlights include an epic guitar solo during Bohemian Rhapsody sung by everyone and some Lady Gaga sung by Sam.
Unfortunately, the day came to a close when we pulled into the bus park in Ripon at 7.30pm still on a high from the two shows we’d now seen and been a part of!