Moderat is the collaborative project of Apparat (Sascha Ring) and Modeselektor (Gemot Bronson and Sebastian Szary), an alliance of Berlin electronicians drawing synergy from their complementary approaches. “Bad Kingdom” is typical, its dubstep buzz, brittle beat and synth pad carrying Apparat's yearning tenor vocal – a sleek, persuasive modern electropop which becomes more chilled in “Let In the Light”. The gassy bass pulse of “Gita” supports Apparat's silky testament to his beloved's “porcelain” quality, but elsewhere he delves into more visceral imagery, particularly over the sparse tonescape of “Damage Done”. The trio's manipulation of euphoric rave dynamics on tracks like “Therapy” brings a fresh approach to a tried-and-tested form.

Album of the Week: A toe-tapping mix of tortured grooves and Texas boogie

Bartók's two violin concertos were composed three decades apart, and Isabelle Faust here skilfully brings out the contrasts between youth and maturity, particularly in her detailed attention to the composer's instructions regarding phrasing and articulation in the “Violin Concerto No. 1”. Terms such as “utterly desolate”, “always volatile”, “dreamlike” and “exhausted” hint at the emotional tenor of a work written in romantic fever, which moves from the blissful serenity of the first movement to the more playful, teasing disposition of the second, which presages his later spikier, more angular style. The “Violin Concerto No. 2” is a masterpiece given its head by Faust, the captivating, rhapsodic opening passage heralding a remarkable performance.

A companion-piece to the earlier Sweet Inspiration anthology of songs by Dan Penn & Spooner Oldham, A Road Leading Home features two dozen of Penn's songs co-written with other songwriters. They're responsible for several great songs here, including “You Left the Water Running” by Billy Young, and “Break Up the Party”, recorded by Jerry Lee's teenage sister Linda Gail Lewis. Penn's forte was Southern soul, and here his two most famous songs are covered in versions not totally shamed by the hits, Roy Hamilton's “Dark End of the Street” exuding tragic nobility, while Brenda Lee's “Do Right Woman, Do Right Man” merits comparison with the Dusty of Dusty in Memphis.

The Palazzetto Bru Zane in Venice has become the centre for a revival of the French Romantic repertoire, recording and releasing a series of “opera books” containing music and libretto alongside essays explicating the circumstances surrounding the work – vital in the case of Massenet's Thérèse if your knowledge of revolutionary France is patchy. There's a sudden, pleasing appearance of a harpsichord minuet during a reminiscence scene. It's an odd but effective balance of wistful recollection and terrified apprehension, a tragedy of devotion and sacrifice which ends with the heroine joining her husband on the tumbril.

If mutant garage-psychedelia is your thing, then Aussie quintet Pond's Hobo Rocket should have your head spinning. There's an audible lysergic fizz about everything in tracks such as “Giant Tortoise” and “Odarma”, with their cosmic-swirl phasing, stereo panning and tendrils of sitar, while heavier cuts like “Xanman” and the epochal “Whatever Happened to the Million Head Collide?” offer brutal, shrill psych-rock weirdness, their squalling guitars careening around Nick Allbrook's piercing, high-register vocals. It's perhaps best summed up by the desultory guest mumbler of “Hobo Rocket” itself – presumably the hobo? – who enquires disgustedly, “What kind of drugs you guys on?”. All kinds, by the sound of it.

Though nowadays played on all manner of instruments, from harp to accordion, the Goldberg Variations was originally written for harpsichord. However, hearing this masterful performance by Robert Costin on the Pembroke College organ, it's impossible to imagine that Bach, an accomplished organist, didn't compose it on such an instrument. Right from the wistful charm of the opening “Aria”, the organ's timbre is a model of acoustical grace, a perfect union of instrument and space, and as Costin launches into the Variations, its full majesty is revealed in rich, satisfying sonorities that build to an epic climax with the “Variatio 30 –Quodlibet”. A marvellous, engrossing performance by a true master.

All Hail West Texas may be the quintessential Mountain Goats album. An expanded reissue of a 2002 release, it was the last in their classic lo-fi style, featuring just head Goat John Darnielle making one-take recordings onto a broken boombox. The chief virtue is the immediacy that courses through tracks like “The Best Ever Death Metal Band in Denton” and “Fall of the Star High School Running Back”. Darnielle's tableaux of Texas characters like the piratical “Jenny” and the drifter of “Distant Stations” are sketched with skill.

Pokey LaFarge is a throwback Americana crooner, somewhat akin to a sprightlier Leon Redbone. The vibe on this debut for Jack White's Third Man label is pre-rock'n'roll. But if his style is retro, his concerns are contemporary, from the complaints about doctors' fees in “Close the Door” to the anxieties over the way a heatwave drives city folk criminally mad in “City Summer Blues”. But LaFarge can see both sides of an issue, exemplified in his contradictory attitudes to work and unemployment in the diligent “Day After Day” and the lazy charm of “Let's Get Lost”.

Mogwai's score for the French TV series Les Revenants places certain restrictions on the band's style which, it must be said, work to their advantage. These short cues are restrained and moody, a series of sustained atmospheres lacking the usual Mogwai cathartic climax – any such releases of tension are more subtly and quiety effected, while most tracks simply leave the mood hanging. The closest they come to classic Mogwai is “Special N”, on which string tones and guitar arpeggios gradually acquire a fuzzy burr and counterpoint organ melody; elsewhere, brooding keyboards predominate on tracks like “Hungry Face”, a doomy processional in which tiny glockenspiel tones dot the darkness like lanterns.