Judd Trump, snooker's latest exciting prospect, toasted sweet success last night when he was crowned the new UK Championship winner in York. The 22-year-old from Bristol bravely fought back from 3-1 down to clinch an impressive 10-8 victory over Mark Allen in a gripping best-of-19 frame final.

Elgar’s The Kingdom arrives in the heat of inspiration on a surge of orchestral magnificence. A glorious theme representing “New Faith” is announced in the strings, as noble and aspirational as anything Elgar wrote.

Poland's Song of the Goat Theatre company – their name alludes to the Greek word for tragedy – created a stir in 2004 with Chronicles: A Lamentation, a startling 45-minute piece based on the epic of Gilgamesh.

There are ghosts and survivor's guilt in the second act of Les Misérables that sound like a trailer for the upcoming stage adaptation of Birdsong; Victor Hugo's Marius (played by pop idol Gareth Gates) comes through the carnage on the Paris barricades and sings of empty chairs and tables in the ABC café while his friends materialise in a celestial, supportive chorus.

There are no visible knives, gore, cauldrons or fateful letters. The witches are reduced to female voices that emerge from the silhouettes of the 12-strong company. Yet by the power of paradox and strong theatrical suggestion, Declan Donnellan's superb Cheek by Jowl version of Macbeth has a terrible and transfixing presence.

Mind games and murder

Leipzig's venerable Gewandhaus Orchestra arrived at London's Barbican Centre with so much more than Bach's St Matthew Passion. They brought with them history, tradition and Bach's very own choir from St Thomas's Church, where his passion first startled Leipzig's faithful on Good Friday 1727.

Hushed awe as the master bows out on a high note

As a former child prodigy blessed with chiselled good looks, they called him the David Beckham of the classical violin. Now he is more likely to be known as the lad with the broken Strad.

Few people are well-versed on the glories of Finland, but that is all set to change with the advent of "Valo" (meaning light), a six-week celebration of Finnish culture, which begins tomorrow at the Barbican. The festival coincides with the 80th anniversary of Finnish Independence, and covers every cultural experience, from music to film, visual arts to tango. Among the highlights of a very full programme of events are the LSO Sibelius Cycle, conducted by Sir Colin Davis, at the Barbican Hall (16, 20, 23, 26, 30 Nov); a film season (22 Nov-6 Dec) including the black comedy The Christmas Party (below); and Talvi, a site-specific installation in the Concourse Gallery (from 17 Nov). Tango Finlandia (22 Nov) will be an afternoon of tango, song and dance, and for the duration of "Valo", there's "Lastu" a selling exhibition of furniture and crafts by leading Finnish designers. For Christmas cheer, there will even be an Internet link with Santa in Lapland. Something for everyone.

'Ives may be baffling at times, but there is something so palpably alive in work after work'

Here, reunited, are the nine couples pictured as unattached individuals on pages 40-41. If you recognise yourself in one of the pictures, and if you are still together as a couple, write to The Broader Picture, Sunday Review, Independent on Sunday, 40 City Road, London EC1Y 2DB, and we will send you a bunch of roses. Martin Parr's photographs can be seen as part of a larger exhibition of photographs of families, 'Who's Looking at the Family?', at the Barbican Centre from 26 May to 4 September. -

THE concept of the apartment hotel, which offers the flexibility of self-catering in a hotel environment, is well known in other parts of the world, but has not yet become established in Britain. The French Orion group, which has a chain of 32 apartment hotels in France and Belgium, including three in Paris, has now opened one in London - the first of what it hopes will be a UK chain.

Turner Kenneth Brown is to be one of four main sponsors of 'Business in Britain', an initiative to support private businesses. The initiative includes awards for 'Growing Businesses of the Year' and a three-day conference and exhibition at London's Barbican Centre in the winter.