14th January and so to the Bridgewater Hall in Manchester, first to hear Joseph Tong and Waka Hasegawa play piano duets. Hasegawa/Tong are making their way through the start up of their careers. They have an engaging platform manner with Hasegawa’s swooping romantic body language while Tong lets his fingers do the talking. They offered a vigorous programme of Schubert’s Allegro in A minor and his Variations on an Original Theme in A flat, two of Dvorak’s Slavonic Dancers, and Ravel’s La Valse. The last demonstrated the limitation of the piano and the virtue of clarity offered by the orchestrated version.

Then in the evening, back to hear Mark Elder and the Halle again. Pure tunes for all in the first half with Elgar’s love sighs in his Sospiri for Strings, pure Classic FM. And then Dvorak’s Symphony 8, a collection of folk, real and imagined no doubt. Peter Donohoe, a local Manchester lad made good, joined the band for Brahms’s second Piano Concerto after the ice cream. He raced them though the piece with masterful technique and considerable expression. I first heard Donohoe as a student at the start of his career brilliantly play one of the Bartok concertos, and would welcome hearing a rematch.