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.

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.