The Opus One series is the Halle's popular programme: a reliable selection of mainstream classics that doesn't exactly set the pulses racing but, like an uninspiring night in the Carling Cup, provides a useful opportunity to see what the youth team can do. The concert focused on two particularly eye-catching talents, both barely into their 30s but already vastly accomplished in their field. Edward Gardner knows the Halle players well, having recently completed three seasons as assistant conductor, and has since graduated to become musical director of Glyndebourne's touring wing. Leading the orchestra through a sumptuously romantic account of Sibelius's Second Symphony, Gardner combines natural authority with a boyish exuberance. Some musical directors conduct with their fingertips, others with their eyebrows; Gardner conducts with his fringe, bobbing up and down on the podium with puppyish enthusiasm.

The eloquent young violinist Henning Kraggerud is a devotee of the eccentric 19th-century Norwegian virtuoso Ole Bull, with whom he shares a chaotic hairstyle and a historically significant violin. The instrument Kraggerud plays is the one Bull notoriously doctored for his unorthodox, polyphonic technique.

Kraggerud put it to more regular use in Bruch's Violin Concerto No 1, a piece so trenchantly established in the Classic FM Hall of Fame, one half-expects to hear advertisements for life insurance and kitchen units between movements.

Kraggerud whipped up an intense, if occasionally imprecise reading, stamping his feet in excitement and bending backwards at the knees like a rock guitarist in full flight. As the piece reached its frenetic climax, Gardner began to get in on the act, as if conductor and soloist were engaged in a bizarre limbo-dancing contest. Rather more exciting than a routine, middle-of-the-road programme seemed likely to produce.

· The programme is repeated on Sunday. Box office: 0161-907 9000.