Halle music director Mark Elder, introducing the evening's music from the conductor's podium, asserted that Stravinsky would have been influenced by Rimsky-Korsakov’s music for the theatre; a sound reason then for opening with the enchanting Suite from Rimsky’s opera The Legend of the Invisible City of Kitezh - standard operatic fare in Russia but virtually unknown here in the west.

Debussy’s Syrinx for unaccompanied flute was composed in 1913 and in this concert preceded Stravinsky’s iconic ballet score The Rite of Spring whose riotous Paris premiere that same year has long been the stuff of legend. Sandwiched in between Rimsky and Debussy we heard Ravel’s virtuosic Piano Concerto for the Left Hand.

The contrasting textures and timbral effects in the four works demonstrated the remarkable alchemy between Sir Mark and his orchestra. This conductor extracted every colour of the spectrum from Rimsky’s dazzling orchestration. The colours continued in the Ravel as his marvellous concerto unfolded in the subterranean depths of the orchestra with brooding basses, growling bassoons and mournful horns, before Argentinian pianist Nelson Goerner established a mood of exquisite lyricism. Such was Goerner’s interpretative brilliance, he simply made the listener forget that only one hand was playing all the notes.

The seductive tonal colours of Debussy’s Syrinx floated into the auditorium from goodness knows where – beautifully realised by Halle principal flautist Katherine Baker as an inspired foil for the elemental force of the Rite of Spring. The Halle plays Schubert, Beethoven and Sibelius at Bradford’s St George’s Hall this coming Saturday, 22nd October.