Performer: Sir Mark Elder

The music of Glinka, Stravinsky, Rachmaninov and Tchaikovsky fills Manchester’s Bridgewater Hall with mystery, intrigue and jollity. 

Sir Mark Elder celebrates 50 years at Covent Garden by returning to his first opera there in 1976 – Verdi's Rigoletto – in a revival of Oliver Mears' excellent 2021 production.

Elder's reading of A Sea Symphony has the maturity and surefooted-ness of a conductor who has fully absorbed the work and long since recognised it as a masterpiece.

Sir Mark Elder conducts the world premiere of Huw Watkins' Concerto for Orchestra and Strauss' gargantuan Alpine Symphony.

Aigul Akhmetshina is on the verge of becoming the definitive Carmen; in this first revival of Michieletto's 2024 production at Covent Garden, she delivers the standout performance. 

Together with soloist Sir Stephen Hough, the CBSO and Sir Mark Elder reinvent Brahms’ First Piano Concerto, present the complex non-narrative of Janáček The Fiddler's Child and suggest real happiness in Shostakovich’s Sixth Symphony. 

This year celebrated Scottish tenor Nicky Spence returns to the BBC Proms to perform in Oberon – and at the Last Night. But how does he feel about all the flag-waving?

As Sir Mark Elder prepares to conduct La Damnation de Faust, he reflects on the nature of the work and what it is that makes Berlioz sound like Berlioz.