“National Opera in 1979, creating the so-called “powerhouse” era with director David Pountney and general director Peter Jonas, Elder has been one of the iconic English musicians of his generation. Since 2000, he has transformed the Hallé Orchestra in Manchester, turning it from an also-ran – it was financially bankrupt and artistically moribund at the end of the 1990s – into arguably the most exciting of any in Britain. No orchestra plays Elgar better than the Hallé at the moment, and no conductor seems to empathise with this quintessentially English music as profoundly as Elder.”