Prom 4: Hallé/Elder review – a farewell eclipsed by the quality of the music-making

Royal Albert Hall, London
Mark Elder has led the Hallé for 24 years, championing the company’s choirs, in great voice here in a striking James MacMillan work, and bringing cerebral discipline and striking emotional truth to Mahler’s Fifth Symphony

In any BBC Proms season, there are always concerts in which the sense of occasion is inseparable from the music-making. This year is no exception, and Mark Elder’s final Prom appearance with the Hallé, of which he has been the music director for 24 distinguished years, was undoubtedly one of them. At the end we got a fine speech from the conductor and an encore, Elgar’s Chanson de Nuit. But in the end it was the fascination of the Hallé’s and Elder’s work, not the emotions of the evening, that gripped most.

One of Elder’s many achievements in Manchester has been to build and sustain the Hallé’s choirs, integral to the memorable Elgar choral works that have provided some of Elder’s milestone events. Three of the choirs, including those for children and young singers, featured in James MacMillan’s 2022 Timotheus, Bacchus and Cecilia, a no-holds-barred hymn to music, set to a 1697 John Dryden text, of which Elder gave the UK premiere in May, and which took up the first half of this Prom.

This concert is available on BBC iPlayer and BBC Sounds. The Proms continue until 14 September

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