The Hallé Orchestra once again entertained a Manchester audience with another magnificent concert.

Continuing the festive music theme at the Bridgewater Hall, I enjoyed Christmas classics and others performed with a twist in ‘Swinging Christmas’ all presented in the style of swing/jazz.

Now if jazz needed to persuade anyone to listen to this type of music, then the wonderful Clare Teal is the perfect artiste to fight its corner.

After the rousing Swinging Christmas Overture performed by the Hallé and conducted by Stephen Bell, she sang her way through many much loved classics and also some not so familiar ones which included Most Wonderful Time of the Year, Let It Snow, The Christmas Song, Winter Wonderland, The Man with the Bag, That’s What I Want for Christmas and Cool Yule.

We were also entertained by BDO - the winners of the 2022 Hallé Workplace Choir Competition - who gave us their rendition of It’s Beginning To Look A Lot Like Christmas.

The first part was then brought to a close with Clare and the audience taking us through The Twelve Days of Christmas, where members of the audience were given the parts of the songs ie a partridge in a pear tree, two turtle doves, three French hens etc.

They then had to stand up and perform any actions each time they were mentioned in the song.

The second part started with the Hallé playing Sleigh Ride and later they played Paul McCartney’s Wonderful Christmas Time.

Clare then took us through more classics including: Santa Claus is Coming to Town, Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas, Snowbound, Merry Christmas Baby, Mele Kalikimaka, What Are You Doing New Year’s Eve, All I Want for Christmas and a bonus addition of Ella Fitzgerald’s I’ve Got My Love To Keep Me Warm. A nice touch was the appearance of Siemens - the winners of the 2021 Hallé Workplace Choir Competition, who were denied appearing last year due to Covid - and they gave us a joyous rendition of Jingle Bell Rock.

The show was then brought to a great finale with Irving Berlin’s magnificent White Christmas (no Christmas show would be complete without it!).I think everyone left the Bridgewater Hall full of Christmas spirit.

Images by Bill Lam