‘The name is Elder, not Elgar’

A large portrait of Mark Elder hangs backstage at the Bridgewater Hall in Manchester. It’s not a flattering representation; in it the Hallé’s music director looks tired, haggard, old. Interestingly, the picture is positioned so that the conductor doesn’t have to go anywhere near it as he passes through the corridors from his dressing room to the concert platform. On 2 June, the 150th anniversary of Edward Elgar’s birth, Elder turns 60. He could pass for a man 15 years younger.

We meet outside his north London home. I arrive early, and he catches me loitering round the corner as he marches down the street after a haircut. Even though he was out celebrating the night before, after the final performance of Verdi’s Stiffelio at Covent Garden, Elder looks fresh and healthy. Several young female colleagues responded to the news that I was meeting him with an immediate ‘phwoar’; on and off the rostrum he comes across as a virile, dynamic figure, a real man, yet one with the sensitivity to conduct repertoire stretching from bel canto to English pastoral to the contemporary Georgian composer Giya Kancheli.