The Love of Three Oranges, Bridgewater Hall, Manchester

Three oranges wittily emblazon the publicity for Prokofiev 2003. The opera The Love for Three Oranges is, after all, one of the composer's best-known works. However the worldwide celebrations, which began with a flurry of concerts and an international conference in Manchester, dig deep into Prokofiev's entire legacy, exploring a remarkably wide range of music. The composer's death was eclipsed by that of Stalin on the very same day but he certainly won't be overshadowed on this 50th anniversary.

The BBC Philharmonic's principal conductor Gianandrea Noseda enjoys something of a reputation as an interpreter of Prokofiev. It was clear from the mysterious, dreamy opening of Symphony No 5, through the jocular scherzo and tender adagio to the hair-raising finale, that he has a natural feeling for Prokofiev's carefully graded dynamics. Noseda is a man of the theatre, after all. Responding to his dramatic wit and pace, both here and in the considerably less ambitious Wedding Suite from Prokofiev's last ballet The Stone Flower, the BBC Philharmonic sounded as if they had been playing for him all their lives.

In a beautifully restrained reading of the First Violin Concerto, James Ehnes seemed to touch the very heart of the music. His hypnotic first entry, calculated to spin effortlessly on, set the tone for a performance high on expressive detail and on intimate dialogue between soloist and orchestra.

The highlight of a later BBCPO concert at the Bridgewater, conducted by Sir Edward Downes, was a stunning performance of the cantata Alexander Nevsky. Even without Eisenstein's icy visuals, the music chilled in the ferocious "Battle on the Ice" and seared in the intensity of Ekaterina Gubanova's haunting lament "The Field of the Dead". Sharing the podium with Sir Edward, the cellist-turned-conductor Paul Watkins kept a firm rein on the Cello Concerto, revised time and again to emerge as the Symphony Concerto. Steven Isserlis was just the man to make a case for the work, tackling the immense challenges of the often frenetic solo line, drawing sounds of delicate translucency from the cello's highest reaches and making as Saint-Saëns said, "a difficulty overcome a thing of beauty".

At a concert of "Unheard Prokofiev" at the Royal Northern College of Music, Noelle Mann, the composer's archivist and festival director, introduced several novelties. From the ceremonial to the salon, from military marches to Schubert waltz arrangements, they were a lot of fun. The RNCM New Ensemble presented a newly reconstructed ballet, Trapeze, pieced together by Noelle Mann. Scored for a picturesque combination of oboe, clarinet, violin, viola and double bass, some of the score was reincarnated as the Quintet Op 39. The ballet's circus characters are not a merry bunch and the score, sometimes pawky and punchy, is also lean and mean. The New Ensemble held the eight movements together with admirable rhythmic precision, and the two newly found movements, orchestrated by Samuel Becker, fitted seamlessly into Prokofiev's pattern.