These two hugely contrasting symphonies come from the opposite ends of Shostakovich's life and career.

In Bonn, civic pride has a name, and that name is Beethoven.

Composer/Pianist Will Todd has been playing the piano since he was three and composing since he was seven. In his own words: "If I had free choice about how I would spend my musical time I'd run a Jazz club in a cathedral with gigs on Friday and Saturday nights, vibrant eccumenical and cross faith worship on Sundays and big choral concerts as often as possible - featuring the best professionals alongside community and youth choirs."

It might be deduced that the only thing worse than working with children and animals would be working with children as animals. But Leoš Janáček was unfazed by the old Hollywood adage and his cartoon-strip derived opera The Cunning Little Vixen was spirited from page to stage with uncynical conviction and, it has to be said, no end of technical hazards.

Too much flighty drama in mezzo-soprano's performance

The Royal Choral Society is 140 years young and joins the ranks of the most venerable choral societies in the land - among them Halifax, Huddersfield, and Hereford. What is it about our love of communal singing that has raised the tradition of the great British Choral Society to such dizzy heights?

Where there’s Falstaff there’s food. And Robert Carsen’s new staging of Verdi’s final operatic masterpiece plays like an ode to gastronomical excess.

One bar into this timely celebration of his work and the composer's identity could not be in doubt.

Not just another revival of a venerable old staging but its 25th showing in the 50th year of director John Copley's work at the Royal Opera House. Julia Trevelyan Oman's grandly designed Bohème is what used to pass for social realism at the opera.