Hallé Christmas Cracker

Stephen Bell conducts the Hallé Christmas Cracker at Bridgewater Hall: festive favourites, a full choir, guest vocalists, and the city’s own orchestra doing the arrangements. The programme is the big tunes of the season, played in a hall that was built for this size of sound. Bells, brass and voices carry in a way a recorded version never quite manages.

Friday 18 December, from half seven. Lower Mosley Street, between the G-Mex side of town and the arena. Check tickets, and look at the seat map if you care whether you are in the stalls or up in the choir circle. Both hear the Hallé properly. This is Christmas done as a concert rather than as background for a meal: you sit, the band plays, and the room does what December is supposed to sound like when someone has bothered with the dynamics. Arrive in time for the doors. The foyer gets festive, and the start is worth hearing from the first bar.