It was to have been the culmination of principal conductor Robin Ticciati’s Brahms symphony cycle with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra. But with Ticciati laid up with a herniated disc, we’re told, it fell to the SCO’s principal guest conductor Emmanuel Krivine to step in at the last minute. What Ticciati would have made of the concert, and of the concluding Brahms Fourth, of course, we’ll never know – and it would be churlish to speculate. What Krivine did make of the evening, however, was something really rather remarkable.

Funny thing, musical fashion. Most listeners would call Borodin’s Polovtsian Dances a popular classic – yet before tonight, I doubt they’d had a professional performance in Birmingham this century. Then there’s the case of Osvaldo Golijov. Remember him? The very fact that it’s taken 10 years for a work as substantial and appealing as his cello concerto Azul to receive this UK premiere tells you all you need to know about how far his stock has fallen – at least for now.

Nature, nationalism, folk culture: the broad themes of Norway’s visual arts map easily onto its music. That has given Leif Ove Andsnes and his colleagues plenty of leeway in planning their musical tributes to the painter Nikolai Astrup. For this, their second programme at the Dulwich Picture Gallery (which is hosting the first ever exhibition of Astrup’s work outside Norway, and the first major one worldwide) the three musicians presented a range of surprising facets of the nation’s musical psyche.

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Francis Chagrin: Symphonies 1 and 2 BBC Symphony Orchestra/Martyn Brabbins (Naxos)

Just a few days earlier, the Scottish Chamber Orchestra had been doing a pretty convincing impression of a symphony orchestra in a powerful Vaughan Williams Fifth Symphony under John Storgårds. And here they were, in crisp, nimble Mozart and Beethoven, being a thoroughly convincing period band – well, with valveless horns, at least. They’re nothing if not versatile.

In the deep recesses of my brain lies a distant memory of an early lesson in musical appreciation in primary school. Excerpts from Beethoven’s "Pastoral" Symphony were being played. The teacher asked us what images came to mind. The answers came fairly quickly, prodded by the music’s title: a babbling brook, a thunderstorm, twittering birds. I was on my way.

To a freezing grey night in Scotland’s capital, the conductor Carlos Miguel Prieto brought a welcome ray of Mexican sunshine. Wearing a broad grin he marched onto the platform of the Usher Hall and launched into Rodion Shchedrin’s impish Concerto for Orchestra No.1, Naughty Limericks, with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra. As its title suggests, this short piece is virtuosic mayhem for a large orchestra: at first hearing it has the swagger and tomfoolery of Gershwin’s An American in Paris but with the admixture of an earthy bawdiness that is totally Russian.

Louis Aubert: Sillages, Violin Sonata etc Jean-Pierre Armengard (piano), Alessandro Fagiuoli (violin), Olivier Chauzu (piano) (Grand Piano)

In 2007 Maxim Vengerov had to withdraw completely from violin playing, and stayed away for four years. He had suffered the after effects of a weight-lifting injury to his shoulder, and needed surgery. But he also described at the time that he felt he needed to re-learn the instrument. If people – like the writer of last night's programme introduction – now refer casually to his “effortless virtuosity”, it is clearly something which has been acquired with an intense effort and sense of purpose.