Manchester has spent two centuries cotton-milling, atom-splitting, pimp-rolling, monkey-walking, protesting and self-mythologising its way into history - sporting history, scientific history, political history and, of course, musical history. In terms of pop, it could be said that Manchester is Britain's pre-eminent musical city. Manchester itself would certainly say so, as bashfulness has never been a handicap here in the city of Liam Gallagher, Tony Wilson and Morrissey.

When I was a teenager, I would get the orange and white "fried egg" No 32 bus from my home town of Wigan down the A580 East Lancs Road to Manchester city centre for gigs. In terms of asphalt and tarmac distance, it wasn't far. But culturally, Manchester was a different planet, an edgy, nocturnal playground of legendary clubs and venues in darkened rainy streets of ruined glamour. I was too young for the nascent northern soul nights at the famous basement of the Twisted Wheel Club and (just) for the infamous Sex Pistols show at the Lesser Free Trade Hall. But I felt the seismic shocks of that night via some of the people who were there and whose bands I would later see play in the city. Joy Division, Buzzcocks, Magazine, the Fall and later still of course New Order, the Smiths, the Stone Roses, the Happy Mondays and Oasis.

Sir Peter Maxwell Davies (back right, half hidden) and colleagues at Manchester University in the 50s, including Alexander Goehr (bottom left), Harrison Birtwistle (top right), John Ogden (centre), Elgar Howarth (top right). Photo courtesy Peter Maxwell Davies

But there is another musical tradition and culture in Manchester with names just as stellar and characters just as large and significant. Names like Barbirolli, Walton, Birtwistle and Maxwell Davies. Manchester's classical music history is as revolutionary and pioneering as punk, and maybe even as radical as some famous former residents such as Engels, Pankhurst and Turing.

It's this heritage and the city's ongoing dynamism that's celebrated in the BBC Philharmonic's 2013-14 season The Mancunian Way, the brainchild of the 'Phil's general manager Richard Wigley. Chief Conductor Juanjo Mena this week launches the series with polymath Manchester son Anthony Burgess's A Manchester Overture, and later The Mancunian Way will cast its net wide stylistically but its heart lies in the world's first industrial city, Cottonopolis as it was once known. There will be a performance of Elgar's First Symphony, premiered in the city's Free Trade Hall by Manchester's own Hallé Orchestra in 1908. You can hear Walton's vivid, elegant Violin Concerto, a piece of characteristic flair and facility by a local lad keen to escape the mills of Oldham and climb the social ladder. There will be a performance of Malcolm Arnold's grave and powerful Peterloo Overture of 1968, commissioned by the TUC and a tribute to the working men and women of the North West assaulted and killed by the yeomanry in the infamous massacre.

But Manchester was a locus of talent and a crucible of creativity for the generation who came after Walton and Arnold – in style if not age - and sought newer, more challenging modes of expression. The so-called Manchester School, (or more properly the New Manchester Music group, as they named themselves) were a group of driven, talented, iconoclastic young men who coalesced at the Royal Northern College of Music during the 1950s and went on to shape the landscape of British music. Young composers Harrison Birtwistle, Peter Maxwell Davies and Alexander Goehr together with pianist John Ogdon and conductor/trumpeter Elgar Howarth set out to make a new English music influenced by the bracing new tonalities and techniques from the continent rather than the pastoralism and romance of the Edwardians.

These once-feared enfants terribles have become the grand old men of British music. Salford lad Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, a former firebrand republican, is now Master of the Queen's Music. As part of the BBC Philharmonic's Mancunian Way season, their ground-breaking works will be played alongside those of Manchester's newest and rising compositional talents such as Emily Howard and Gary Carpenter who have close links to the city and who both have works premiered.

Though the season will reflect the city's classical music culture and heritage, this is a city where snobbery gets short shrift and boundaries are there to be broken. The BBC Philharmonic has lately collaborated with both the xx and Richard Hawley. I've enjoyed many a pint in the Bridgewater Hall's local boozer The Britons Protection with Joe Duddell, a composer, conductor and orchestral arranger who has worked extensively with Hawley as well as the genre-defying local luminaries Elbow. My own small informal group of friends, affectionately known to its members as The Tone Deaf Society meet regularly for beer and curries and modern music evenings at the RNCM, The Bridgewater Hall, Chethams or one of the many venues in a musically rich metropolis.

Brian Cannon's cover design for Oasis's Definitely Maybe album

In the mid-1990s when Sir Peter Maxwell Davies ( or "Max" as he is universally known ) was nominated for the Mercury Music Prize in their then token nod to the classical world, I interviewed him in his manager's London flat. I took along another nominated album by some fellow Mancunians; Definitely Maybe by Oasis. Max, who was resident composer with the BBC Philharmonic for many years, declined to offer a musical critique but the twinkle in his eye suggested he heard some kindred spirits in this vigorous, vibrant, very Mancunian sound, and a very Mancunian Way of making music.

* The BBC Philharmonic's Mancunian Way season begins on 28 September at The Bridgewater Hall. The concert will be broadcast live on Radio 3.