Halle – St George’s Hall The new Bradford International Orchestral Concert Season got off to a splendid start on Saturday with the Halle under their music director Sir Mark Elder.

The orchestra won a Gramophone choral award quite recently with a recording of Elgar’s The Apostles, and again they were in terrific form.

The conductor’s operatic blood celebrated the bicentenary of Verdi’s birth with the thrilling overture to the composer’s La Forza del Destino. The remainder of the first half of the advertised programme had to be changed because of the bereavement of singer Lesley Garrett’s family.

The brilliant young trumpet player, Alison Balsom made an admirable replacement in works by Haydn, Astor Piazzola and George Gershwin.

Haydn’s Trumpet Concerto was given a wonderfully confident and sensitive performance.

The big surprise was what followed: Libertango, a delicious work by the Argentinian composer Piazzola, and an arrangement of Gershwin’s exquisite song Someone To Watch Over Me.

After the interval, Sir Mark whet our appetites with an eloquent statement of the political problems that beset the background to Shostakovich’s Fifth Symphony.

The orchestra was then more than a magnificent match for the moving development and ultimate triumph of this epic work.