Tristan and Isolde, Bridgewater Hall, Manchester

No gimmicks, just the music - it's Wagner unplugged

No danger here of finding love on a modern luxury cruise liner or dilapidated gun deck, or of the director being roundly booed at curtain call. No one rolled on the stage and nothing went against the grain of the music in the Hallé Orchestra's concert presentation of the first act of Wagner's Tristan and Isolde. On a purely imaginary surging, swelling seascape – hardly the gently rippling Bridgewater Canal – the platform of Manchester's Bridgewater Hall became the prow of the ship bearing Isolde to Cornwall, the auditorium's roof lights twinkling like stars overhead. Opera of the mind at its best.

Any concert performance of opera exposes orchestra and singers at the centre of the action, the former stripped of costumes and props, the latter unprotected by the pit. What a treat, then, in this interpretation of the first part of Tristan, its fable of love and death open to so many interpretations, music and drama are so inextricably linked, to be able to go straight to the heart of the work. Mark Elder, respected for his performances of Wagner at ENO and elsewhere, again proved himself the most musicianly of opera conductors in his unfolding of this single act. His choice of tempo and dynamics both felt and sounded right and clearly suited the singers with whom he appeared to enjoy a rapport all the more remarkable for what must have felt like a very short rehearsal period compared with the prolonged collaboration any staged production inevitably provides.

Katarina Dalayman, taking on this most taxing of soprano parts for the first time, was an outstanding Isolde, thrillingly secure in her top notes and deeply expressive in the variety of colour and richness she drew from her lower and middle range. And the glint of steel she betrayed, in her recollection of passing up the chance of revenge on Tristan for the death of her betrothed, melted exquisitely in the final post-potion moments.

As Brangäne, Anne-Marie Owens communicated her role as loyal maid with great immediacy, her vocal merits matched by Matthew Best's staunch Kurwenal. The American Richard Decker, growing into an eloquent Tristan, though here not always in the centre of every note, was especially touching as he offered his sword, and life, to Isolde.

If Rhys Meirion's clear-voiced sailor couldn't have been atop a mast he should at least have been singing from the rafters instead of closeted away among the stalwart tenors and basses of the Hallé Choir. Leaving the orchestra to the last in no way diminishes either its prominent role or its impressive and beautifully modulated playing.

Within an idiomatically phrased and paced musical structure, the lucidity of instrumental detail – despite the odd tiny smudge – was remarkable, and the climaxes were no less shattering for allowing the words to come across with exceptional clarity even when Elder was in full Wagnerian flood.

There should have been house-full signs for these two performances but unfortunately they weren't needed. Opera in concert is something Elder does so convincingly that the two performances of Verdi's Falstaff in May next year – given, hopefully, sans mise-en-scène in the same serious-minded way – is a date to put in your diary now.

Details of the Hallè's newly announced 2002-3 season (some attractive programming, including a Shakespearean theme, all wrapped up in a new visual identity) on 0161 237 7008 or brochures@halle.co.uk