Eyes used to be nearly as important as ears for listening to music. Pre-gramophone, you had to be in the presence of the musicians. There was no other choice. To see the second violins tugging at a quiet syncopation helped the brain witness what the ear alone might have missed. It also fixed in the memory some record of a transient occasion. Those who go to concerts will know this well.

Many dedicated music fans prefer sitting alone with headphones or speakers, no visual distractions and the infinite possibility of instant replay. It seems as if in our quest for aural perfection we may have downgraded the importance of looking. Over the age of 10, it feels childish to admit you still want to see the big bass drum not merely for entertainment in the dull passages (though that too) but to hear and comprehend better.

These factors sprang to mind with startling force after a first visit to the new 730-seat Saffron Hall, Essex. This handsome, blond-wood structure, as solid and functional as it is exciting and ambitious, was built for a mere £10m thanks to a private donation. The building stands in the grounds of Saffron Walden county high school. The headteacher’s office is next to the bar, a reminder of its double use: a state school hall which yet can attract world-class musicians, thanks to enough money and the skilled directorship of Angela Dixon, former head of music at the Barbican. Tonight the violinist Maxim Vengerov will give a recital – in Essex! In a school hall! That numbing phrase “community music provision” has never been more enticing.

Vladimir Jurowski and the London Philharmonic Orchestra chose Saffron Hall as the venue to launch their own new season. This is how good it is. The tenor Ian Bostridge brought dark intensity and vivid poignancy to Vaughan Williams’s On Wenlock Edge, settings of Housman poems from A Shropshire Lad. Dynamics were bold, with no fear of Bostridge being drowned by the gales and storms of the orchestration, whether in the opening song or the tolling bells of that heartbreaker, Bredon Hill.

In the LPO’s adroit account, Mozart’s G major Symphony No 32 burst into spirited life, from its opening fanfare-like attack to its ebullient trumpets-and-drums finale, packing adventure into its short, three-movement structure. At the start, Mozart used the still fairly novel technique of premier coup d’archet (first stroke of the bow), requiring uniform, exact bowing instead of the any-old-how shambles of the past.

Precision, however, can go too far, and players may turn into well-behaved sheep. In Brahms’s Symphony No 4, the main work in the concert, I was struck – not to say distracted – by the first violins intermittently bowing as they pleased for particular phrases. Puzzled, I later inquired and learned that Jurowski wants to encourage a sense of spontaneity and freedom in certain expressive moments.

To the audience it looks as if, suddenly, the players have said to themselves “Let’s be anarchic for a few bars”, and I wasn’t quite convinced, though in this, crisp, invigorating performance, which showed the LPO in a bright, analytical light to impressive effect, it was a minor quibble. The warm, responsive, vital acoustic makes you sit up. From the raked seating, all is laid out before you with ample space, near enough to feel direct engagement, every player visible, their contributions part of, but not subsumed by, the whole. If only all halls were like that.

The Barbican has done its best to upgrade its acoustic, but it was hard not to miss the Saffron Hall gleam. Russia set the tone for the London Symphony Orchestra’s pair of opening concerts, conducted by Valery Gergiev at the start of his last season at the LSO helm, with music by Tchaikovsky, Prokofiev and Shostakovich, and Denis Matsuev, pianist, as featured soloist. The second concert, last Tuesday (also broadcast live on Radio 3), opened energetically with the LSO strings nimble and fearless in Prokofiev’s “Classical” Symphony No 1 – sounding easy, though in truth full of technical treachery. This came off better than the composer’s Fifth Symphony, where balance was a problem and textures sounded tangled, despite some typically virtuosic LSO playing.

Matsuev flung himself vigorously at the piano in Tchaikovsky’s fiendishly difficult Piano Concerto No 2, a clotted work where the balance of soloist and orchestra is endlessly problematic. This Russian wizard is not troubled by a few wrong notes. He plays with fervour and abandon, and without let-up. It’s all quite tiring. The poetry came in the slow movement, with tender solos from principal violin (Roman Simovic) and cello (Tim Hugh). At last the music began to sing.

Other new seasons and celebrations were of a choral variety. The Philharmonia Orchestra and chorus – plus choirs from Gloucester and Bristol – under the ever inspiring Esa-Pekka Salonen, gave a wild, rough-edged but enthusiastic account of Berlioz’s gargantuan Requiem, brass placed strategically round the hall to give a an aurally and visually spectacular surround-sound effect. The Festival Hall acoustic led to some delay in ensemble between orchestra, chorus and these offstage ensembles – more than 300 people in all. But getting through purgatory to hell is a slow and alarming business, as Berlioz’s unwieldy monolith reminds us in every bar. The chorus sang their hearts out in this performance, dedicated to the memory of the conductor Lorin Maazel, who died in July.

The BBC Singers, around two dozen strong – tiny in comparison – celebrated their 90th birthday with two concerts, both available on iPlayer. Without this group – the eldest sibling of the BBC’s performing ensembles – a great tranche of choral music, commissioned and premiered by them, would not exist. They sang a few of these gems, by Lennox Berkeley, Judith Bingham, Gabriel Jackson, Bob Chilcott and their new associate composer, Judith Weir, filling St Giles Cripplegate and the Barbican with their renowned pitch-perfect accuracy and radiance.

This group also sang Britten’s Hymn to St Cecilia (1940-42), one of the finest English choral works of the 20th century and another which they had premiered. In Auden’s poem, the blessed Cecilia is urged to “appear in visions/ To all musicians, appear and inspire”.

Arts Council England’s chief executive, Alan Davey, just named as the new controller of Radio 3, now has the BBC Singers and all five BBC orchestras in his care. He should regard their magnificent and precious living legacy with wonder before he checks his budget, panics and reaches for a scythe.

Star ratings (out of 5)
London Philharmonic Orchestra/Jurowski *****
London Symphony Orchestra/Gergiev ***
Philharmonia Orchestra/Salonen ****
BBC Singers *****