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.

Named after a piece by the Uzbek composer Dmitri Yanov-Yanovsky, Night Music: Voice in the Leaves explores music from the former Soviet Asian republics, played with dexterity and sensitivity by performers including the theremin virtuoso Lydia Kavina, who excels on Iraida Yusupova's "Kitezh-19", in which her eerily plaintive keening is allied to a tape of varispeeded chimes and plucked strings.

In a week replete with intriguing cross-pollinations of style and sound, this may be both the most deliberate, yet the loosest-sounding.

The unorthodox pairing of Berg's anguished memorial to Manon Gropius and Beethoven's earthy, ecstatic concerto casts a curious spell in this thoughtful performance from Isabelle Faust and Orchestra Mozart under Claudio Abbado.

With German Christmas markets springing up like mushrooms in British cities, it was appropriate that the Armonico Consort should present a seventeenth-century musical complement.

Induuchlen demonstrates a different side of Heinz Holliger to the virtuoso interpretations of Bach on the recently-released Konzerte Und Sinfonien Für Oboe.

The Zen garden at the Temple of Ryoanji made a huge impression on John Cage when he visited Japan in 1962, but it took him until the 1980s before the experience bore musical fruit.

These early pieces by Boulez and Stockhausen may have palled slightly with age, but still impart a powerful evocation of the excitement of the postwar avant-garde.

The title derives from Vivaldi's astonishing roster of patrons – "nine Highnesses", he proudly noted in a letter – for whom the various concerti featured here were written, and from the seemingly angelic virtuosity of his musicians at Venice's Ospedale della Pietà.

On Voices Of Bach, the Berlin Philharmonic's principal oboist Albrecht Mayer adapts the vocal melodies of Bach's cantatas to fit his instrument.

ENDYMION ENSEMBLE PURCELL ROOM, LONDON

"You can't be shy if you're a bagpiper; you will always provoke a reaction. I've had eggs thrown at my house, been asked to leave places, and often, when I'm hired to play at a function, I'll see someone coming towards me and I always know what they're going to ask - `Can you turn it down?' And of course you can't.

Classical NEW QUEEN'S HALL ORCHESTRA BARBICAN CENTRE LONDON