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| The Bridgewater Hall, Manchester |
The Bridgewater Hall in Manchester is celebrating its 30th birthday! The opening concert was on 11 September 1996 and the hall has just announced a celebratory 2026/27 season.
Manchester’s historic concert venue, the Free Trade Hall (which was built in 1853-56 on the site of the Peterloo Massacre) was damaged in World War Two and patched up in the 1950s. It remained a somewhat unsatisfactory concert venue until the Bridgewater Hall’s plans came to fruition. The new hall is named for the 3rd Duke of Bridgewater whose eponymous canal runs through Manchester (and is often described as the first great achievement of the canal age). Ironically, the Bridgewater Hall actually sits on a specially constructed arm of the Rochdale Canal!
Almost to the day there is a 30th anniversary concert which brings together various strands of Manchester’s music making including guest artists Rowetta, Matt Wilde, Banksie, Roberto and Vulva Voce. The evening will also see the debut of the Greater Manchester Youth Orchestra which is being led artistically by Untold Orchestra, a Manchester-based collective known for innovative, genre-crossing orchestral work.
The BBC Philharmonic continues its season in the hall beginning with Sibelius’ Symphony No. 5, and featuring Simone Young and pianist Cédric Tiberghien in Schumann’s Konzertstück Op. 92 and Introduction and Concert Allegro Op. 134 plus Strauss’s Alpine Symphony (quite a concert!), Tchaikovsky’s Pathétique, Brahms’ Requiem, Mahler’s Symphony No. 4, and ending with Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9. The Hallé Orchestra opens its bold season under music director Kahchun Wong with Thomas Adès, whose work
These Premises Are Alarmed was premiered at the Hall’s very first
concert in 1996, returning as Principal Guest Conductor (see my season preview for further details)
The International Concert Series brings orchestras from Germany, Ukraine and Japan to Manchester alongside recitals, opera and chamber music, opening with The Sixteen and concluding with trumpeter Matilda Lloyd and the Goldmund Quartet.
Visiting orchestras include NDR Philharmonie Hannover under Stanislav Kochanovsky; Stuttgart Philharmonic with pianist Jeneba Kanneh-Mason; the London Philharmonic Orchestra pairing Beethoven’s Emperor Concerto (with Benjamin Grosvenor) with Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 10; Sinfonia of London under John Wilson in Walton’s Viola Concerto with Edgar Francis, and Rachmaninoff’s Symphonic Dances; the Ukrainian National Philharmonic Orchestra under Theodore Kuchar, and Osaka Philharmonic under Tadaaki Otaka with Viktoria Mullova in Prokofiev.
Opera North present Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde and other visitors include pianist Angela Hewitt, Sir Karl Jenkins conducting The Armed Man, Freya Ridings, Katherine Jenkins, African Soul Rebels, Bellowhead and Rebecca Ferguson.
Associate Artist Jonathan Scott presents a season of lunchtime organ concerts celebrating 30 years of the Hall’s Marcussen Concert Organ, while Manchester Midday Music – one of the UK’s longest-running lunchtime concert series, founded in 1915 – returns for a full new season.
Further details from the hall’s website.
