Having just said a very fond farewell to Mark Elder as Music Director after nearly a quarter of a century at the helm, the Hallé now welcomes Kahchun Wong and the start of a new era in its history. In his first official concert as Principal Conductor and Artistic Advisor in September this year, he unveiled a brand-new suite from Britten’s full-length ballet The Prince of the Pagodas co-constructed with the Hallé’s Composer Emeritus Colin Matthews – a name to conjure with in Britten circles. And as if to supplement this addition to the concert repertoire, here comes a dazzling recording of the full ballet completed in September 2023 at the orchestra’s Manchester home, Hallé St Peter’s in Ancoats. As the first fruit of an emerging partnership, the result is a thrilling harbinger of riches to come.

The Prince of the Pagodas has always seemed to be the poor Cinderella among Britten’s stage works and is rarely seen in public. The composer himself conducted the premiere at Covent Garden on January 1, 1957, and after an initial run of 23 performances Decca enterprisingly took the well-versed Orchestra of the Royal Opera House into Walthamstow Town Hall to record the result: this was striking while the iron was hot with a vengeance and the set stood as an authoritative account for decades. But in the mid-1980s Oliver Knussen began to explore the music for the Aldeburgh Festival and gradually realised that Britten had made 43 cuts for the recording, which effectively removed over 20 minutes of music from the full score. With the assistance of brothers Colin and David Matthews (both of whom had assisted Britten in his last years) he brought the music to dazzling new life in a definitive complete recording with the London Sinfonietta, issued by Virgin in 1990, just after Kenneth MacMillan unveiled a colourful new production at Covent Garden.

All Britten devotees will undoubtedly own one if not both of these recordings, but this should not deter any one of them from rushing to add this new Hallé set to their collection. It is vividly recorded in fulminant sound, which gives both depth and presence to the playing. There is something spacious in some of Wong’s direction – adding some eight minutes to Knussens’s total – which seems to conjure a tangible sense of theatrical presence while bringing a visceral physical brilliance to Britten’s kaleidoscopic invention. But, in particular, he brings the element of sheer genius in the score – the gamelan-inspired writing of Acts 2 and 3 – to life with instinctive insight. Doubts about John Cranko’s scenario will perhaps always remain but away from the stage it’s now time for our Cinderella to make it on to every listening platform in the land in this wonderful new embodiment.