Culture in the cabarets

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32777, 30 November 1971, Page 12

Culture in the cabarets

The Halle Orchestra, Britain’s oldest symphony orchestra, is tuning up to start competing with strippers, jugglers, comedians and jazz bands by playing in night - clubs, reports David Lancashire of Associated Press, through N.Z.P.A.

“We are not going to sit and squeal for more cash grants from public funds—we are going to help ourselves out of our financial difficulties,” said Sir Geoffrey Haworth, chairman of the 114-year-old orchestra. Like Britain’s eight other major orchestras, the Halle has money troubles. Some of the London orchestras stoop to playing tunes for television commercials. “So we decide to earn a few pounds by bringing culture to the cabarets,” said Sir Geoffrey Haworth. “We appeared at a club in Wakefield this year, and it was so successful we have been booked for four more appearances," said a musician in Manchester, the Halle Orchestra’s home. These might be just the beginning. Night-club dates for a symphony orchestra are something of a revolution in British music, but the Halle began in the wake of a revolution and has played its way through two world wars.

The orchestra was founded in 1857 by Charles Halle, a German-bom conductor and pianist who fled to Britain from the 1848 revolution in Paris. During World War 11, Sir John Barbirolli—who took over the New York Philharmonic after Arturo Toscanini —was summoned to Manches-

ter to rebuild the war-deci-mated orchestra. Sir John Barbirolli, who died last year, probably would not have shaken his baton at a night-club job. He grew up playing cello in vaudeville theatres, silent movie houses and the opera, and one of his favourite tunes was “Smoke Gets In Your Eyes.” The Halle, now under James Loughran, makes its living playin gin Manchester, touring concert halls in the northern industrial cities, making records, and broadcasts. It receives grants from the Government and other sources, but not enough to meet today’s climbing costs.