Prom 16: CBSO/ORAMOProm 17: GardinerProm 18: Bamburg SO/NOTT/Grimaud

In the Albert Hall sauna, performances continue to amaze. There may, scandalously, be no woman conductors or composers featured in this season's Proms, but female performers have been knocking socks off.

In the CBSO's Prom 16, the young Canadian Leila Josefowicz was bewitching in Shostakovich's First Violin Concerto, starting coolly with bleached sound and little vibrato. But come the vast cadenza, she took all her time, showing understanding of the shape while adhering to Shostakovich's grim rhythmic patterning. She has the musicality to match her technique.

Hélèn Grimaud, in Schumann's piano concerto with the Bamberg Symphony under Jonathan Nott (Prom 18), went from exquisitely dreamy to tigerish, her solid left hand emphasising the harmonic bass. The fiendish piece held no horrors; she, like Josefowicz, knows that playing softly works surprisingly well.

In the same Prom, the Danish soprano Inger Dam-Jensen brought up the rear in Mahler's Symphony No 4, bringing bell-like purity to the nutty words of the last movement. Nott has a sleek machine in this orchestra, disciplined and sensitive to colour and phrasing. Alas, the UK premiere of Verwandlung ("transformation") by Wolfgang Rihm, a largely tonal work, was sabotaged by coughing.

Prom 16 included Webern's sultry Passacaglia and Brahms's Symphony No 4 (which ends with a passacaglia) in scintillating performances. Sakari Oramo produced transparent textures in the Brahms, muscular but light and crisp.

In John Eliot Gardiner's late-night concert (Prom 17), Monteverdi's Mass was woven between pieces by G Gabrieli and lesser-known Venetians - Giovanni Antonio Rigatti seems a find - performed on multiple stages but to little acoustical effect.