Antonio Pappano fervently believes that talking about music is a vital part of his communicative art, and nobody does it better. Given that the London Symphony Orchestra's enterprising Half Six Fix format is scheduled for an hour each time, and that Ravel’s complete Daphnis et Chloé lasts almost that long, there wasn’t going to be much room for pre-performance demonstration yesterday evenng, but what we got still hit the mark.

Milton Court, like its parent Barbican Hall, disconcertingly inflates the sound of larger ensembles and voices. Had there been a conductor for all four pieces in the Britten Sinfonia’s programme - Michael Papadopoulos was there for the two most recent works – the approach might have been more nimble and nuanced. Though Mozart in masterpiece form could have been a gambit to entice warier punters, a fourth British work would have rounded out the overall picture better.

For the second big concert of his “residency” with the Hallé this season, Thomas Adès chose one major piece of his own, rather than a set of shorter ones. Tevot, a 21-minute one-movement work written for the Berlin Philharmonic 18 years ago, requires a huge assembly of performers, so it was probably too good a chance to miss once having taken the decision to do Tippett’s Triple Concerto, which is pretty lavish in that regard, too.

The young Elmore String Quartet, recent graduates of the Royal Northern College, made an impressive Kings Place debut last night with a programme that put music written by composers at a similarly early stage in their careers alongside another’s last work. They played with a subtlety and thoughtfulness that point them up as a group to keep an eye on.

It’s hard to know which aspect of this adventure to praise the most. Perhaps the fact that of the four recent works originally programmed, the two freshest were by young beneficiaries of the LSO Panufnik Composers Scheme. There was also the pleasure orchestral members took in their colleagues’ playing, not just Rebecca Gilliver’s as soloist. The culminating glory was their response to François-Xavier Roth’s mastery in Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra.

At first glance, this looked like an odd coupling: Stravinsky’s Violin Concerto from 1931, all spiky neo-classicism and short-winded expressionist sparkle, as a tributary opening before the mighty rolling stream of Bruckner’s Seventh Symphony.

Brazil-born conductor Simone Menezes, known for imaginative and pioneering concert presentation, presided over a striking and illuminating programme shared by Manchester’s Kantos Chamber Choir and Manchester Camerata, with the star quality of Karen Cargill the icing on the cake.

It is Passion season, and Bach’s St John and St Matthew – as well as his less well-known Easter Oratorio – have been well covered on theartsdesk in the last few weeks. Whether with large choir, small choir, or one to a part with no separate chorus, there have been plenty of great performances to be heard this year.

Waiting, and hoping, may prove just as intense an experience as the fulfilment of a wish – or of a fear. Bach knew that, and infused his Easter Week music with a sense of suspense and anticipation built into vocal and instrumental lines that build and strive and stretch towards a climactic revelation that, until the very end, remains just out of reach. 

“Death doesn’t scare me at all,” said my friend Christopher Hitchens during our last telephone conversation. “After all, it’s the only certainty in life. Dying, however, scares me shitless”.