Frank Bridge: Orchestral Works BBC National Orchestra of Wales/Richard Hickox (Chandos)

Dissatisfied housewives who eventually stand by their men joined jewelled hands in a divine evening of operatic decadence. Suppressed Bianca all but steps over the body of her strangled lover to get at the muscles of her killer husband in Zemlinsky’s A Florentine Tragedy, taking its cue from the deep purple imagery of Oscar Wilde’s story. And in Richard Strauss’s Die Frau ohne Schatten (The Woman without a Shadow), the Dyer’s Wife readily gives up her dreams of sacrificing motherhood and taking up with a fantasy toyboy when domestic violence looms.

John Cage is funny: this much we know. The deadpan prankster at the heart of 20^th-century artistic experimentalism was always about the inadvertent punchline, the chuckle that comes from unexpected disjunction, the relief that comes from reminders of the absurdity of reality, as much as he was ever about any engagement with progress, technology, the transcendent. It's entirely natural, then, that Stewart Lee (pictured below), who has spent his whole career reaching outwards from the comedy circuit towards the avant-garde, should want to present his work.

Janine Jansen had every right to be nervous. The last time most of us saw the London Symphony Orchestra the audience spent the whole time laughing at their star soloist. But then Mr Bean has a very different skill set to Jansen. She's able to journey with silken smoothness across the musical stratosphere for what seems like eternity. He's able to blow his nose while playing the piano with the end of an umbrella. That said, one could have imagined Jansen's performance of Szymanowski's First Violin Concerto provoking laughter, but only from a sense of awe and astonishment.

The prospect of a new concerto from a largely unknown composer who, it’s safe to say, had never been performed previously in Liverpool may have seemed a little daunting. By the end of the 22-minute world premiere, however, rapturous applause greeted this approachable, tuneful, understated and, above all, gentle work. This was so much the case that it will no doubt be heard again soon.

Kalkadungu: Music for didjeridu and orchestra William Barton (didjeridu) (ABC Classics)

When you hear Christian Tetzlaff play you hear Brahms, or Beethoven or, in this case, Bach. What you don’t hear a lot of is Tetzlaff himself. I mean that in the best possible way – so willing is the violinist to submerge himself, to set aside ego and agenda. It’s an approach that is at its purest in Bach’s solo violin music, and as he presented the sonatas and partitas to a full Wigmore Hall last night the generosity of this extraordinary musician allowed his audience to set ourselves aside for a moment too as we listened.

Fans of the Leeds International Piano Competition argue that this triennial event, now in its 49^th year, has done more to raise the city’s profile than any other local institution. Supporters of Leeds United would doubtless disagree, but Dame Fanny Waterman’s long-running contest has grown into an influential, internationally renowned affair. Dame Janet Baker awards the prizes. Lang Lang is now the competition’s Global Ambassador along with Honorary Ambassador Aung San Suu Kyi. Waterman, now an improbably spritely 91, is still very much in control of proceedings.

The BBC Symphony Chorus did a mass Mobot. A posse of medal-winning rowers and sailors led the encore of Rule, Britannia. The Maltese tenor Joseph Calleja entered in Team GB trackies. It has been, we can probably agree, a summer unlike others we have known. Every year the Last Night of the Proms celebrates Britishness as if we’ve won a stack of golds and wowed the world, when mostly – these no longer being the 1890s - we haven’t. But for obvious reasons last night’s Last Night had the chance to put clear blue water between itself and the regular warm bath for jingoists.

The Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra can play Haydn’s last symphony - No 104 “London” - in its sleep but that is not, I hasten to add, the impression one wants to take away from any performance of it and especially not in the city that inspired it. The music tells us that Haydn had a rather better time in our capital than Bernard Haitink would have us believe but this rather dogged account on the penultimate night of the Prom season seemed to suppress the work’s genial good humour and pre-empt most of its surprises with a one-size-fits-all approach.