[4] By the end of the century the ageing William Stockley had come to be seen as increasingly outdated[5] and his orchestra was considered to lack players of reputation.
[11] In ten seasons Halford's orchestra gave over 80 works their Birmingham premieres, including pieces by the Russian composers Alexander Borodin, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, Modest Mussorgsky and Alexander Glazunov; the Austrian Anton Bruckner and British composers Edward Elgar, Rutland Boughton, Granville Bantock and Charles Villiers Stanford, as well as neglected works by Bach, Beethoven and Mozart.
[14] The Musical Times indicated that the concert was first planned to take place even earlier and Havergal Brian asserted that Rachmaninov had written the work specifically for Halford.
[14] The orchestra also attracted prestigious soloists: as well as Siloti pianists who performed alongside Halford's orchestra included Ferruccio Busoni, Ernő Dohnányi, Arthur De Greef, Percy Grainger, Frederic Lamond and Egon Petri; violinists included Adolph Brodsky, Lady Hallé, Willy Hess, Joseph Joachim, Émile Sauret, Eugène Ysaÿe and Fritz Kreisler.
[12] By 1906, however, interest and support for the orchestra was declining and the standard of performances was increasingly coming under attack by the critic Ernest Newman of the Birmingham Post.