‘The Hallé Concerts were the highest expression of Manchester civilization. Most of the audience were regular subscribers who occupied the same seats year after year. When they changed it, it was to move up in the price-list – not in the social scale – until they arrived with the Burghers in the front rows. But the whole audience was a single community, with personal acquaintanceship running from the front rows to the standing room at the back. The orchestra belonged to this community also. Its members greeted their friends in the Hall, and the conductor himself gave a little bow of recognition tot the more distinguished citizens. For after all, this was the one genuinely permanent orchestra in England, with the only permanent conductor. In the Free Trade Hall on a Thursday evening, I had no reason to regret my season ticket to the Vienna Philharmonic. Under Richter, the orchestra, I suspect, had been heavily Germanic, and there was still too much Brahms for my taste. But Harty gave us also the new and the unusual to an extent greater than we get now from the Third Programme of the BBC. In other ways the Hallé Concerts were agreeably old-fashioned. The society was technically ‘owned’ by the £100 guarantors until, in the thirties, economic need forced a democratic revolution and admitted an inferior class – with inferior rights – of those who could only guarantee £10. The programmes gave the precise duration of each piece in the margin, and one waited eagerly to see whether the conductor would break this previous record. Patrons were also informed when carriages should be ordered, while the announcement of a Special Concert Train from Central Station consoled the less opulent.’

A.J.P. Taylor, Essays in English History, 1976.

Very interesting, smittims. I don't know that recording of The Rio Grande. I'll look out for it.

Lambert's musical tastes and experience were very wide.He was,for instance,one of the first people in Europe to take Ellington seriously as a composer.