How delighted, and possibly astonished, the German pianist Charles Hallé would have been to have heard his orchestra in such vibrant health, 150 years to the day after he conducted his first “Grand Orchestral Concert” in the grimy northern city he had made his home. And how the tough cotton-workers in his audience might have relished this gala - which, with its ten items and three-hour length, had a real Victorian feel. Add Dame Janet Baker's spoken reminiscences of the Hallé Orchestra's golden 1950s under Barbirolli, and we certainly had our money's worth. But which piece could have been omitted? All had significance.

Some evoked Hallé himself. At that 1858 concert, for instance, he played Weber's Konzertstück - though I doubt whether he played it with as much quixotic verve as the young Russian pianist Polina Leschenko did here. And Hallé's friendship with Berlioz was marked by the inclusion of Le Corsaire, done with a scintillating light touch under Mark Elder's direction.

Other pieces recalled the orchestra's later history. The Hallé gave the first public performance in 1929 of Constant Lambert's jazz-infused The Rio Grande, ebulliently resuscitated here by the Hallé Youth Choir under James Burton, with Anna Stéphany seductive in the mezzo solos and Jonathan Scott skimming deliciously through the virtuosic piano part. The Hallé also gave the premiere of Elgar's In the South, which Mark Elder conducted in immaculate sensibility.

The 21st-century Hallé's commitment to the new was exemplified by its revival of Thomas Adès's brilliantly weird These Premises are Alarmed (premiered at the opening of the Bridgewater Hall), and by a startling fanfare from its current associate composer, Colin Matthews. Called A Quick Start, it was a hailstorm of splattered brass notes - out of which, incongruously but majestically, a pastiche 17th-century chorale emerged, sonorously sustained by Hallé Youth Orchestra members.

Lancashire's vocal traditions were also celebrated. Sir John Tomlinson, a local lad whose name you may know, sang Verdi and Wagner with roof-shaking intensity. And the Hallé Choir rose to a spine-tingling climax in Vaughan Williams's Toward the Unknown Region.

But, rightly, it was the orchestra that stole the show, when Elder conducted a wonderfully blended account of Debussy's Fêtes. After the near-catastrophes of the 1990s, the Hallé's miraculous renaissance should make Manchester glow with pride. Let's hope the city gets behind the orchestra's 2058 Foundation, a £1.5 million campaign to fund educational work.

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