James MacMillan: new Symphony No.6 launches Hallé season
The Hallé in Manchester opens its new season with the world premiere of James MacMillan’s Symphony No.6 under the baton of Kahchun Wong. MacMillan is the orchestra’s Featured Composer across a year of concerts, with other highlights including Christmas Oratorio and Timotheus, Bacchus and Cecilia with Mark Elder on the podium and Concerto for Orchestra with the composer conducting.
James MacMillan travels to Manchester across the 2026/27 season in his role as Featured Composer with The Hallé, with seven concerts featuring his music. The orchestra launches the new relationship with the world premiere of his Symphony No.6 at Bridgewater Hall on 24 September. This opening concert is conducted by the orchestra’s Principal Conductor and Artistic Advisor Kahchun Wong, following his performances of MacMillan’s Veni, Veni, Emmanuel with The Hallé in 2024. The German premiere of Symphony No.6 is scheduled on 28 April with the co-commissioning Dresden Philharmonic conducted by Donald Runnicles.
The new 30-minute score stands in a line of MacMillan symphonies which have ranged from large-scale symphonic statements to chamber orchestra scores, from programmatic to abstract, from public to private. MacMillan explains how the roots of Symphony No.6 grew from memories of family members who had influenced him:
“I have often reflected on the decision by Edward Elgar to create character portraits of “his friends pictured within” in his Enigma Variations where each of the movements is a musical sketch of his various friends, including his wife Alice, and dedicated to each of them individually… There is something of this going on in my sixth symphony. Although it is an abstract work there is a sequence of secret portraits in the form of four short miniatures which get the symphony underway, and which culminate in a fifth and much more substantial movement.”
“The first miniature is for woodwind alone, the second for percussion, timpani and piano, the third for brass alone and the fourth for strings and harp, and each privately commemorates (and mourns) four close family members who were hugely impactful on my life before they died. The bigger fifth movement brings the whole orchestra together and is much more through-composed and developed, covering a wide range of moods, textures and tempi. There are spectral memories of the four opening miniatures throughout but the music now seems much more emphatic and expressive.”
Symphony No.6 was commissioned by the Hallé Commissioning Circle for the Hallé Orchestra to mark MacMillan’s title of Featured Composer in the 2026/27 season, and the Dresdner Philharmonie in celebration of his 2025/26 and 2026/27 residency with the orchestra and the 10th anniversary of its concert hall.
MacMillan’s feature with The Hallé continues on 14 November with the first Manchester performance of his acclaimed Christmas Oratorio at Bridgewater Hall. Soloists Mary Bevan and Roderick Williams join The Hallé Choir and conductor Mark Elder, who was on the rostrum for the work’s UK premiere and first recording. On the afternoon of 7 February, The Hallé Youth Orchestra performs ‘side by side’ with The Hallé in MacMillan’s Larghetto for Orchestra, an arrangement of his widely performed Miserere, conducted by Aku Sorensen. The evening concert sees MacMillan on the rostrum to conduct his Concerto for Orchestra, premiered in 2024 and bearing the subtitle Ghosts, referring to the musical spirits that haunt the work – not least Beethoven.
Passiontide sees MacMillan return to Manchester on 25 March to conduct his powerful Seven Last Words from the Cross with The Hallé joined by the BBC Singers. Mark Elder conducts the Halle’s choirs on 23 April in a performance of Timotheus, Bacchus and Cecilia, composed for the final concert of Elder’s 24 years as Music Director of the Hallé. Elder has also conducted the work at the BBC Proms and with the Bergen Philharmonic. The text is drawn from Dryden’s Alexander’s Feast and its three sections respectively describe the famous musician who accompanied Alexander the Great on his military campaigns, the god of celebration and drink, and the patroness saint of music. MacMillan’s role as Featured Composer is rounded off on 8 May by a chamber concert at Hallé St Peter’s including the composer’s song cycle Raising Sparks, setting texts by Michael Symmons Roberts and sung here by Mary Bevan.
A further residency for MacMillan is continuing in Germany with the Dresden Philharmonic. The orchestra’s Chief Conductor Donald Runnicles leads a tour of Veni, Veni, Emmanuel between 3 and 10 April, travelling from Dresden to Frankfurt, Hamburg, Hannover and Düsseldorf. Runnicles also conducts the German premiere of the new Symphony No.6 on 28 April. Other residency highlights include a new choral work, Detem – ‘to the children’, composed for the Dresden Philharmonic’s Children’s Choir, plus a selection of MacMillan’s chamber music.
> Visit the Dresden Philharmonic website
This autumn brings the Finnish premiere on 2 October of MacMillan’s A European Requiem by the Tampere Philharmonic and the Swedish premiere on 21 November of his large-scale Hildegard of Bingen setting Ordo Virtutum with the Swedish Radio Choir. Music from his Christmas Oratorio is heard for the first time in Australia and Germany with performances by the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra and Choir of Trinity College under the composer’s baton on 26 November and by the Munich Radio Orchestra and Bavarian Radio Choir conducted by Carlo Rizzi on 29 November.
> Further information on Work: Symphony No. 6
Photo: James Bellorini