As a symphonic conductor with a significant operatic pedigree, you sense there is nothing Mark Elder prefers to get to grips with than a massive choral extravaganza. The Halle programme combined two; one relatively obscure, the other practically ubiquitous, yet both wilfully subject to no rules but their own.

Zoltan Kodaly remains a minority taste in this country, lightly dismissed as a kind of low-fat alternative to Bartok. Yet as a choral composer, Kodaly was a true pioneer, and the monumental Psalmus Hungaricus is an astonishingly unorthodox dramatisation of Psalm 55, in which a tenor takes the role of the betrayed King David, with a suppliant chorus echoing his anguish and indignation in the manner of a Greek tragedy.

Premiered in 1923, the work was Kodaly's response to the chaos of the first world war and the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian empire. Here, the strident Czech tenor Stefan Margita responded vehemently to the bitterness of the work's central episodes, though the overall tone was redemptive and resigned. As Kodaly stated: "Our age of mechanisation ends with man himself as a machine. Only the spirit of singing can save us from this fate."

Compared with this, the parade of highlights from Beethoven's Ninth Symphony ran the risk of seeming over-familiar. Yet Elder reminded us that this is the most bipolar of all Beethoven's symphonies, veering from the bleak foreboding of the first movement to the wild choral exultation of the conclusion with untamed energy.

The Halle Choir exploded into joyous, cosmic noise, while the ecstatic response reaffirmed that the applause is almost as significant a part of this work as the music itself. It was at the 1824 premiere that the composer famously had to be turned to face the rapturously cheering throng. The Manchester crowd greeted Elder's account with a roar that could leave anyone stone deaf.