At the end of Mark Elder's season as music director of the Hallé, things look good for his future. He still walks on with his mouth open as though astonished that an entering conductor should elicit applause; and he still likes to give speeches.
But the orchestra plainly appreciate a conductor who is serious and musical, and they react superbly to his direction. Moreover, while the details are not yet available, it looks as though the orchestra is once again on a firm financial footing after the near-bankruptcy of a few years ago.
The French programme that ended the season's Opus One series opened with a positively glittering performance of Dukas's The Sorcerer's Apprentice. The textures were marvellously varied; the delicately changing speeds were controlled with unanimity; and the work emerged with all its humour as well as its colossal climaxes. It was the same with the Symphonie Fantastique by Berlioz. Here the trick is to create a compelling design out of the remarkable variety of ideas and moods that Berlioz assembled to create the impression of an opium-induced fantasy. And here Elder was at his best, pulling the bits together with an iron hand, and controlling where everything was going. To do this he secured dynamic extremes from the orchestra, especially the strings, whose playing was at one point so quiet that one could hear a transistor radio offstage. Between these works Amanda Roocroft sang some of Canteloube's ever-popular but bizarre Songs of the Auvergne.
It is hard to know why they have such a firm place in the repertory, when these simple folk songs are virtually crushed out of existence with a mass of heavy orchestration; but Roocroft is certainly the person to sing them. She can float above those rich sounds without showing any strain in her lovely voice; and she can give an astonishing range of expression with her facial and bodily movements. That the texts are inclined to disappear, or simply be treated as a means of gently articulating her vocal line, may in these songs be no real problem.
