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L<\/span>et\u2019s start at the beginning. Or, at least, what used to be the beginning. As someone who has been attending orchestral concerts for a very long time, I\u2019ve noticed that over the decades we have witnessed the decline of the <\/span>overture<\/a><\/span> to a point where it\u2019s relatively unusual to find a concert that starts with one. What has happened?<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p><\/div> <\/section> It was once very different. I\u2019m looking at a programme for A Grand Miscellaneous Selection of Music<\/i> conducted by Henry Bishop at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, on 4 April 1832. The substantial order of service was in three parts, each commencing with an overture: Weber<\/a><\/strong>\u2019s Der Freisch\u00fctz<\/i>; Spontini\u2019s Grand Overture to Nurmahal<\/i>; and Rossini<\/a><\/strong>\u2019s Grand Overture to Semiramide<\/i>. <\/span><\/p>\n Move on 26\u00a0years, to the Hall\u00e9 Orchestra\u2019s first concert under its founder conductor Charles Hall\u00e9, at Manchester\u2019s Free Trade Hall on 30\u00a0January 1858: it, too, opened with Der Freisch\u00fctz<\/i>, but also included Auber\u2019s La\u00a0Sir\u00e8ne<\/i> and Rossini\u2019s Le si\u00e8ge de Corinthe<\/i>. <\/span><\/p>\n The early Prom seasons conducted by Henry Wood<\/a> <\/strong>also featured plenty of overtures. The opening programme at London\u2019s Queen\u2019s Hall on Saturday 10 August 1895 began with Wagner<\/a><\/strong>\u2019s Rienzi<\/i> and Ambroise Thomas\u2019s Mignon<\/i> overture also featured. But during the 20th century, as orchestral concerts became shorter and, from the 1960s onwards, began to feature long symphonies by Mahler<\/a><\/strong> and Bruckner<\/a><\/strong>, the overture started to disappear from its regular spot as the opener (which is, of course, what the French word \u2018ouverture\u2019 means). <\/span><\/p>\n I raise the subject with Sir Mark Elder, whose two decades as chief conductor of the Hall\u00e9 Orchestra (one of the best orchestras in thew world<\/a><\/strong>) have revived that ensemble\u2019s artistic reputation. He tells me that when he first started conducting at the BBC Proms as a young man, the BBC controller of music, Robert Ponsonby, virtually banned operatic overtures. \u2018He wouldn\u2019t let me do them,\u2019 says Elder. \u2018He said, \u201cthey belong in the theatre, and that\u2019s where they\u2019re going to stay\u201d.\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n Elder agrees that overtures are now something of an endangered species, and reminds me that \u2018programmes of 100 or 150 years ago very often had a sort of mixed-bag feeling. The \u201cbig listen\u201d was often at the beginning of the first half. I\u2019m trying to bring that back. I think that if you have the \u201cdifficult\u201d listen in the first half, and then do a second half that is intentionally made up of shorter, lighter pieces, that\u2019s a very nice way to have an evening of music.\u2019 <\/span><\/p>\n Does he think that the once near-ubiquitous format of Overture \u2013 Concerto<\/a><\/strong> \u2013 Interval \u2013 Symphony<\/a><\/strong>, known in the business as \u2018meat and two veg\u2019, worked? Or had it become a bit stale? \u2018It worked, but you need to ring the changes to make the concert-going experience unexpected and full of variety, so that the public is intrigued.\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n Still, isn\u2019t there a risk of losing a lot of rather good pieces by not performing overtures? \u2018Yes, <\/span>absolutely. I enjoy them. In June, we\u2019re welcoming <\/span>an audience back into the Bridgewater Hall, and I thought we should do two pieces that show off the orchestra and different parts of our Hall\u00e9 personality. So, it will be Petrushka<\/i> \u2013 Interval \u2013 Enigma<\/i><\/a><\/strong>. Then I started to think about it, and I realised that what this programme needed was a curtain-raiser. People will be coming to the Hall for the first time in a while. Petrushka<\/i> is about 35\u00a0minutes, and it\u2019s a wonderful, colourful listen, but it is<\/i> a listen, so we\u2019re going to do Glinka<\/a><\/strong>\u2019s Ruslan and Lyudmila<\/i> immediately as a sort of gunshot. It just feels completely right to me.\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n