New York City Opera locks out musicians and scraps rehearsals a month ahead of new season

Dance is the dominant theme in clarinettist Martin Fröst's eclectic recital with the Australian Chamber Orchestra.

Successful tribute acts must look the part as much as sound familiar and while the Spaghetti Western Orchestra pay attention to detail, their look is strangely distinctive.

In these straitened times a new full-length classical ballet is a rarity, so the Opera National de Paris deserves praise for breathing new life into a forgotten hit from the 19th-century. With music by Delibes and Minkus, and costumes by Christian Lacroix, La Source – the spring – is a version of the Rusalka legend set in what is now Chechnya. When it premiered in 1866, its exotic locale was part of its appeal.

Who's going to be rocking your world over the next 12 months? Read on...

If, as Einstein maintained, the universe is constantly expanding, then Jerry Dammers' Spatial A.K.A Orchestra may be the ideal vehicle in which to explore its outer limits, this being a characteristic it emulates, with the addition of a string section now expanding its ranks to some 24 musicians.

Yes, concert halls and opera houses worked their socks off, but there was thrilling music in a car park and off the beaten track

Music whose shock-value is an integral part of its power should not be heard too often, and when it’s plundered and parodied like Beethoven’s Ninth, this holds particularly true: three times a year is enough.

A collaboration with a 30-piece orchestra: perhaps not the ideal occasion to debut live a B-side track, but The Leisure Society’s founders Nick Hemming and Christian Hardy have an agenda tonight.

The Royal Ballet’s Marianela Nuñez makes a delightful and delighted Sugar Plum Fairy. She looks carried away by happiness, hugging herself at the chance to dance for us. She’s the finishing touch on a Nutcracker that opens with rough edges before settling down to sparkle.

A feisty staging of Humperdinck's opera lollipop is high on shock as well as sugar

At the core of the Australian Chamber Orchestra is a string ensemble, soloistic in nature, enquiring in spirit, whose connections one to the other make for a palpable kind of musical telepathy.

Goldfrapp’s Little Noise set was always going to be a religious experience - performed on an altar, perfumed with incense and presided over by the vicar of St John’s Hackney, who is up by the organ enjoying the show and the view.

Spiralling in torment, stung by the hurricanes of Hell, Dante's adulterous heroine Francesca da Rimini gropes blindly for salvation in Tchaikovsky's symphonic fantasy.