EIF preview: conductor Sir Mark Elder on his transformative 24 years with Manchester's Hallé Orchestra

Speaking to Elder two decades on, as he prepares to close the book on his transformative 24-year tenure as music director of Manchester’s Hallé Orchestra, the image he projects is of a man so visibly content with his life and career he could easily outdo Prince Andrew in the “no sweat” league. 

On Saturday, however, Elder and his orchestra will throw every ounce of energy into their final performance together in an Usher Hall programme featuring Mahler’s Fifth Symphony, the work chosen by the 77-year-old to say goodbye to his colleagues. It has been central to a recent valedictory run of performances around the UK, including the Aldeburgh Festival and BBC Proms.

Except it’s not actually goodbye. Elder is to continue as the Hallé’s conductor laureate, though the commitment will be considerably less, allowing him to explore new relationships, especially in Scandinavia – where he is currently principal guest conductor of the Bergen Philharmonic – and in the USA. “There are a few American orchestras I really enjoy and hope to go to more regularly,” he says. “I just need to be careful and look after myself, not race around too incessantly, and to value calm time.”

He’s earned the breathing space. When Elder took up the reigns at the Hallé in 2000 – a successor to such immortalised antecedents as Sir John Barbirolli and Hans Richter – the orchestra was facing bankruptcy and, in the wake of his immediate predecessor Kent Nagano, in artistic free fall. “The situation was severe and didn’t really allow for optimism,” Elder recalls. 

John Summers had just been drafted in as troubleshooting chief executive with a reputation for getting things done. “I said I wouldn’t be able to consider the position until I knew the financial future was secure.” Elder was persuaded. “I trusted John and we decided to go all out for it, start afresh, realise our common dreams. Central to that was getting the orchestra playing again with full emotional commitment, because that had gone. Seeing bankruptcy written on the wall, like Belshazzar’s Feast, had created a deep malaise. They’d been wounded.”

What followed was phoenix-like. Elder’s insistence that greater efforts were needed to embrace and invigorate the orchestra’s wider community, to expand the demographic of its audiences, led to the creation of multi-stage youth choirs and a Hallé Youth Orchestra. As a spin-off, says Elder, “younger audiences at concerts have increased considerably in recent years”.

At its very heart, though, the orchestra was revitalised. Elder’s persuasiveness and polish influenced its prize recordings of Wagner and Elgar. Did he realise his ambitions? “In many ways yes, but it would be strange if a music director left thinking he’d ticked all the boxes. I really wanted to round off the Wagner project with Tristan und Isolde but we couldn’t afford it, which of course doesn’t close the door to ever doing it in the future, should that prove workable.”

Elder’s immediate focus is on his Hallé swan song in Edinburgh, and a programme that matches the Mahler with Lili Boulanger’s spiritually dense setting of Psalm 130, composed in her sick bed with the help of her sister Nadia a year before her premature death. For that, they’ll be joined by the Edinburgh Festival Chorus.

Then there’s the small matter of the deconstruction of Mahler’s Fifth the day before the performance, with the audience sitting on beanbags around and within the orchestra. “What I don’t want to do there is simply give a guided tour of the symphony. When I did that some years ago, people wrote in to say they’d bought tickets for a concert, not a lecture. It’s very important to get the tone right, give context and deeper understanding, to engage in an uninhibited way.”

Nor does Elder want to repeat the horror he faced on his last working visit to Scotland. Stuck by a sudden bug he was unable to complete a week’s engagement with the BBC SSO. “I was smitten overnight and couldn’t have conducted a bus that day!” he recalls. All is about to be remedied though. “I enjoy the SSO very much and will be with them again before Christmas, conducting Sibelius, Prokofiev and Tchaikovsky.” So much for retirement.

Sir Mark Elder presents Mahler 5 Inside Out with the Hallé Orchestra on 16 August, followed by a full performance of the Mahler symphony and Lili Boulanger’s Psalm 130 on 17 August, both events at the Usher Hall. www.eif.co.uk

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