Baffling and vile: ETO’s Manon Lescaut reviewed

In 1937, John Barbirolli took six pieces by Henry Purcell and arranged them for an orchestra of strings, horns and woodwinds. Nothing unusual about that: arranging baroque music for modern symphony orchestras was what famous conductors used to do. Beecham and Hamilton Harty re-upholstered Handel. Mahler did something similar with Bach, then directed the result from a grand piano, and wouldn’t you give anything to have heard him? All good clean fun in those innocent days before the advent of historically informed performance.

It’s unusual to hear these things revived now, and curiouser still when the person doing the reviving is Thomas Adès, currently artist in residence with the Hallé. But here he was, sweeping into Barbirolli’s steroid-pumped Purcell with a 50-piece string section and encouraging the four horns to knock it for six. There wasn’t an inch of flab, either: 21st-century string players know how to vary their vibrato, and the sheer heft and muscularity felt transgressive enough.