Live, Video: Find classical music concert, opera, ballet and dance reviews | English | Our Hunting Fathers for soprano or tenor and orchestra, Op.8

Ryan Wigglesworth proves a fine interpreter of not only his own work in his return visit to the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra.

The fourteen-year-old Benjamin Britten was already a prolific young composer, albeit without any formal training, when he heard Frank Bridge’s The Sea at the 1927 Norfolk and Norwich Triennial Festival. Hearing this performance and also meeting Bridge (who later became his composition teacher) were seminal events in the youngster’s life.

Sir Mark Elder conducted the Hallé in an unusual programme of music themed around hunting. There were many excellent performances, most memorably in Britten's Our Hunting Fathers, which added substantial depth to the evening.Assistant conductor Jamie Phillips began proceedings with a solid account of Haydn’s Symphony no. 73, “La Chasse”.

In advance of a nationwide spate of celebration concerts, here was an all-British programme that didn’t so much as mention the Jubilee or the Olympics. And a great job the CBSO made of it, under guest conductor Andrew Manze. His expressive hands not only encouraged beautiful music, but they were a joy to watch too.