Alex Burns
The Bridgewater Hall is about to turn 30. Will Fulford‑Jones explores how the arrival of a world‑class concert hall helped redefine Manchester’s cultural and civic identity.
One of Manchester’s modern landmarks opened its doors for the first time exactly 30 years ago. The Bridgewater Hall heralded a new dawn for music in the city, at last giving the Hallé and its loyal audiences the venue they deserved. But its significance runs deeper than its contribution to Manchester’s musical life. The hall’s construction was a bold project that signalled to the wider world that it was possible to build an ambitious modern city on the ashes of economic and industrial decline.
To appreciate the importance of The Bridgewater Hall in the emergence of modern Manchester, it helps to consider what came before it.
The Free Trade Hall was and remains a treasured landmark of the city’s Victorian heyday, completed in 1856 and the home of the Hallé from its first concert two years later. But as the city’s main concert hall, it left plenty to be desired – not least its muddy acoustics, ill-suited to music of every stripe. Only the most incorrigible sentimentalists grumbled when news came that the city would be getting a new hall to take its place.
Acoustic testing of The Bridgewater Hall ahead of its opening. © Len Grant.
The IRA bomb of 1996 is often said to have been the catalyst for the regeneration of Manchester, but the process really started with the creation of the Central Manchester Development Corporation (CMDC) in 1988. In partnership with Manchester City Council, it was the CMDC that took The Bridgewater Hall from inception to completion, part of a swathe of development projects that set the stage for the 21st-century city.
Manchester in the late ’80s and early ’90s was a far cry from today’s skyscraping metropolis. Residents were few and far between – it’s become an article of faith that the city-centre population in 1990 was a mere 500, not even sufficient to fill the Royal Exchange Theatre – and plots of land were far easier to come by than they are today.
The city’s relative dereliction meant that the then-nameless concert hall could be granted a plum site on a former car park just a couple of stone’s throws from the G-Mex (originally a railway station, by then a convention centre, since renamed Manchester Central). Renton Howard Wood Levin (RWHL), architects of Sheffield’s Crucible Theatre, won the contest to design the hall in 1989, with construction of the £42m building starting four years later.
RWHL’s design was very much of its time, and made no attempt to echo the surrounding red-brick urban landscape. Indeed, the building’s main tribute to the city’s industrial heritage is its name – it honours the third Duke of Bridgewater, who in the 18th century built the transformational Bridgewater Canal. Rather, the hall’s bold, angular exterior seems to pay homage to Manchester’s self-claimed status as the original modern city, the sharp point of its front elevation resembling nothing so much as an arrow directing us towards the future.
The building’s greatest innovation is actually invisible to most of us. The hall rests on 280 isolation bearings – essentially, colossal springs – created by the German firm GERB and designed to keep out external noise. It was the first concert hall in the world to be built using such technology, contributing to the building’s outstanding acoustic.
For the sound of the hall is something very special – night and day by comparison to the Free Trade Hall. The sound is excellent for amplified shows, but it’s for orchestral concerts that the hall really shines: every pianissimo as clear as water, every fortissimo a guaranteed breath-taker.
On 11 September 1996, less than three months after the IRA’s bomb caused devastation in the city, The Bridgewater Hall opened with a concert by the Hallé – an all-English programme, Walton’s ‘Belshazzar’s Feast’ and Elgar’s ‘Enigma Variations’ preceded by a world premiere from George Benjamin.
That first concert was conducted by Kent Nagano, then midway through his seven-year tenure as the orchestra’s Chief Conductor and Music Director. But the Hallé’s life at The Bridgewater Hall has been defined by the man who took Nagano’s place – Mark Elder, who made such a success of the role that he’s been Sir Mark Elder since 2008.
Elder, who had made his name in the 1980s as Music Director of English National Opera, was appointed in 1999 and took over a year later. But the afterglow produced by the opening of The Bridgewater Hall had faded, to the say the least. This was a desperate time for the Hallé – worlds away from the post-war glory years under Sir John Barbirolli, whose 27-year service is honoured outside the hall in the name of Barbirolli Square and a bust (by Byron Howard) at the entrance.
“Britain’s oldest orchestra […] is waiting to be told by its accountant whether it has a future,” was the blunt opening to a BBC news story in February 1998. The Hallé had accumulated seven-figure debts following financial mismanagement, leading the Arts Council (now Arts Council England) to freeze its funding, and there was doubt as to whether The Bridgewater Hall’s keystone ensemble would even be around to celebrate the venue’s second birthday. “The situation… didn’t really allow for optimism,” as Elder put it in an interview with The Scotsman during his final tour of duty as Music Director in 2024.
The arrival of John Summers, who took over as the Hallé’s Chief Executive in 1999, signalled a sea change in the orchestra’s fortunes. Elder and Summers’ 20-year partnership saw the Hallé’s reputation transformed, both artistically and commercially – and it’s doubtful that the pair could have affected their dramatic transformation without the considerable asset of a top-tier concert hall at their disposal.
We can’t let this survey pass without mention of what may be the hall’s unsung hero: its mighty organ, a Rolls-Royce instrument with a Formula One engine. Short of standing on the runway at Terminal 2, there’s no sound in the city quite as viscerally powerful as this extraordinary instrument, built by the Danish firm of Marcussen & Søn at a cost of £1.2m (closer to £2.5m in today’s money).
There’s no missing this monster, a dominant presence behind the stage. Standing as tall as three double-decker buses and tipping the scales at 22 tons, the organ comes with four keyboards and produces its sound through a scarcely credible 6,025 pipes. Pull out all the stops – there are 76, by the way – and the sound is electrifying, as you can hear at one of the regular recitals by organist and Bridgewater Hall Associate Artist Jonathan Scott.
The hall approaches its fourth decade in rude health. Now under the baton of Kahchun Wong, Principal Conductor since 2024, the Hallé remain its anchor tenants, with the BBC Philharmonic another regular fixture. Manchester Camerata and Manchester Collective have also featured, as have ensembles and soloists from around the world in the hall’s long-running International Concert Series.
But the what’s-on pages of the hall’s website now exhibit a gloriously catholic taste. A quick glance at the listings reveals a bewildering variety of acts due to appear here in the coming months – a 30th birthday concert featuring Happy Mondays singer Rowetta and drag star Banksie, an evening with John Waters, Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood guesting with the Hallé, an ’80s double-header with Kim Wilde and Tiffany… The list goes on.
As a symbol of modern Manchester, The Bridgewater Hall now has plenty of newer, flashier and splashier rivals, from the Deansgate towers to Aviva Studios. But it remains an essential venue at the heart of the city’s cultural life – and 30 years on from its opening, it’s hard to imagine Manchester without it.
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The Bridgewater Hall’s 30th Anniversary Concert takes place on the 20th of September, celebrating Manchester’s music past, present and future. Book Here.
