Fun is not a word you immediately associate with Hans Werner Henze. Profundity, yes; genius, certainly. But having fun never seemed to figure much on this composer's scale.

This is why Henze's 15th (and, the 80-year-old insists, final) opera is such a pleasant surprise. L'Upupa and the Triumph of Filial Love premiered at the Salzburg festival in 2003, and is a beguiling Arabian Nights-inspired adventure about a sad birdman whose hoopoe has gone missing. In some ways it's both Henze's Magic Flute and his Falstaff: a profound symbolic quest of childlike simplicity, and the sound of a great man of the theatre enjoying the last laugh.

Sadly, L'Upupa is unlikely to have a fully staged production in this country any time soon. In the meantime, this was the next best thing: a suite of tableaux from the opera, given the title Five Messages for the Queen of Sheba, with the singers replaced by saxophones.

Andre de Ridder knows this music better than most, having worked closely with Henze to prepare the score for the Salzburg production. Yet whether the piece truly stands up as an orchestral suite is open to question - it lacks internal cohesion, and is obviously extracted from a larger work.

Having gone out on a limb with L'Upupa, the Hallé wrapped a bog-standard Beethoven programme around it. Soloist Isabelle Faust pulled out a surprise with a bespoke cadenza for Beethoven's Violin Concerto in D by the Russian composer Katia Tchemberdji, which incorporated a few unexpectedly Slavonic modal slurs. De Ridder confessed to being so taken aback at the dress rehearsal that he forgot to cue the orchestra back in. Suffice to say that it was all right on the night.