Edward Elgar said it first: "The living centre of music in Great Britain is not London, but somewhere further north". And when his First Symphony was premiered in Manchester in December 1908, it marked a new dawn for British music. There's no better way to launch our year-long celebration of the Mancunian way of music-making than with Juanjo Mena's first performance of Elgar's gloriously stirring masterpiece - though a performance of Brahms's tempestuous First Piano Concerto by the Manchester-trained Stephen Hough might just run it close.
But first, we raise the curtain on a year of great music with A Manchester Overture by - yes - the Anthony Burgess. The author of A Clockwork Orange was also one of Manchester's most underrated composers: tonight, we change all that!
