The Hallé’s archive is a wonderful resource for aspects of our musical history. There are concert programmes covering our performances in Manchester and beyond from 1858, photographs, correspondence, sound recordings and press-cuttings to name a few.
Diligently working ‘behind the scenes’ to make more of this material available to our website audience, we have launched the Hallé Repertoire Database. This immense resource, covering more than 140 years of our musical history has over 40,000 entries thanks in large part to dedicated volunteers. Stroll through our performing history to find concert information on venue, conductor, soloist, composer and work. If you have ever wondered where the Hallé ‘first played’ a piece, or which soloist first interpreted a favourite concerto, how many times Sir Edward Elgar conducted his own works here, or even if we performed on your birthday, then soon you’ll be able to find out!
For more information on the collections, please contact one of our archivists at archive@halle.co.uk
Provenance: Arthur Reynolds gifted the material to the US Friends of the Hallé in 2026. The collection is on loan to the Hallé Concerts Society, with support from the National Lottery Memorial Fund.
Dates: 1738-2025
Description: An Archive of manuscripts and memorabilia related to the Life and works of Sir Edward Elgar, collected by Arthur Reynolds. Please note that the following catalogue is a distillation of Arthur Reynolds' much more detailed description. In order to make available a description of all items, an AI script has been applied to the original catalogue so that it can be compatible with an online cataloguing structure. The rest of the catalogue descriptions will be added to these entries in due time. Until that time, if you wish to know if there is more information on any material listed herein, please contact the archive.
Files from Chief Executive & Concerts' Departments
Description: Box listed only and in numerical order. Gaps in the sequence have been catalogued as part of HS. Boxes numbered to 101 originated from General Manager's office. 102 on from Concerts Department in several accessions.
Description: This management group has been created to accommodate those artificial collections that exist within the archive. The major collections are the photographic archive and the printed programmes. In both cases the majority of each collection originates with the Hallé Concerts Society, but over time each collection has been added to and much of the original provenance has been lost. Particularly in the case of the photographs, they are infinitely easier to access if grouped together and so this has been done. Notes of original locations and depositors are given as appropriate. The third collection contains material donated to the Library.
Description: Various personal collections of administrators, musicians etc. that have worked for the Hallé Orchestra or the Hallé Concert Society or strongly affiliated to it.
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