There's been increasing traffic between the folk and classical fields of late, though it's rare for a contemporary songwriter to be the focus, as in this "Elizabethan Tribute to Nick Drake".

With his wild hair and stubble, James Rhodes is the Russell Brand of the piano, though he could cut back on the swearing in his laddish but informative introductions highlighting Beethoven's “interiority”, Chopin's adolescent crushes etc.

It’s a welcome new trend that pianists should begin their recitals with a Haydn sonata. Still regarded in some quarters as the humble forerunner to Mozart, Haydn not only created the sonata form, but carried out experiments in it which still sound daring today.

On first listen, there is nothing radical about the Schubert's performance here.

Philip Glass's gargantuan minimalist classic Einstein on the Beach – though he hates the term 'minimalist' – premiered in Avignon, and has taken 36 years to reach the London stage.

The furtive opening bars of Mozart’s C minor Piano Concerto No. 24 were shrouded in a mellowness of tone that made them welcoming rather than darkly unsettling and as the well upholstered sound of the venerable Staatskapelle Berlin took hold we were cast back into an era of sound and style that was altogether “other”. And then - final confirmation - the piano entered.

This latest release from the Elias String Quartet pairs the last of Haydn's six String Quartets with the first of Schumann's, written as a deliberate shift of his priorities from piano to strings.

‘Some people say Vivaldi wrote the same concerto five hundred times,’ said Steven Devine before starting his harpsichord recital in the Purcell Room. ‘And if that’s the case, you’re in for a pretty boring morning.’

When you are arguably the greatest violinist in the world a four-year “time out” from the public arena can seem like an eternity.

A fascinating tangle of multiple identities and forgotten histories

Until two years ago I served on the committee of our local free pop festival in north Devon. Each year we would invite a bunch of bands down and throw a really fantastic party on the seafront in Lynmouth, Exmoor. This is a lovely setting for bands, with the cliffs on one side and the sea on the other. In the evening, the festival would move to the various pubs in the area and merry-making would ensue.

I've enjoyed some of Karl Jenkins's work, but this is fairly unbearable: based on texts from "peacemakers", it ends up as an all-encompassing assemblage of white-hatted do-gooders rather than a coherent piece.