Thursday 11 October 2007, 7.30pm
PRE-CONCERT EVENT AT 6.15PM

Brahms Alto Rhapsody     13'
Bruckner Symphony No.4 in E flat, 'Romantic'     68'

Marc Albrecht conductor • Karen Cargill mezzo-soprano
Gentlemen of the Hallé Choir

Having opened our season on Saturday 15 September, Mark Elder is delighted that we are joined by Marc Albrecht for the opening concert of the Thursday Series. Once assistant to Claudio Abbado, Albrecht is emerging as a conductor of great authority and power: 'he breathed air into Brahms's textures and opened up new perspectives of sound' (The Daily Telegraph). Often regarded as rivals in Vienna, where their lives overlapped, Brahms and Bruckner now seem more like genial companions, both expressing the grandeur, richness and searching energy of their time. Brahms wrote his sublime Alto Rhapsody, setting words by Goethe, for a woman to sing to a chorus of men, in 1869, soon after his German Requiem. Bruckner's Fourth Symphony dates from just five years later, a work whose golden sound and rapturous melodies prompted the composer to subtitle it 'Romantic'.