“O wise young judge”, says Shylock to Portia in The Merchant of Venice.It seemed just such a figure who made her way to the piano at the Wigmore Hall last night. Besuited, bespectacled, with a poised upright posture that frees her arms, plus the serious demeanour that I sometimes term “Heifetz face”, the youthful Georgian pianist Mariam Batsashvili eschews any fashionable emoting, arm-flinging or face-pulling.

How many musicians can you fit in the main space of the Fidelio Orchestra Café? The answer is 23 string players in masks, for the recording of Strauss’s Metamorphosen of which I was a solitary witness in the summer. With diners accommodated, probably four is the limit.

We may have started out among the wholesome pleasures of nature, but we ended up in the bedroom – once, that is, we had recovered from the flying breasts… Soprano Louise Alder’s recital – the last in the Wigmore Hall’s month-long lunchtime series – had a twinkle in its eye and the weekend firmly in its sights.

You could imagine that normality had returned watching the live webcasts from the Wigmore Hall. The Hall has bucked the trend, and managed to present a full autumn season, to a carefully separated but still substantial audience. Yesterday evening’s concert was to be given by Quatuor Ébène, but they pulled out at the last minute—problems with travelling from France perhaps the reason. But the Wigmore Hall had another ensemble, the Elias Quartet, lined up and ready to give a similar programme.

How loud can the applause from a scanty, socially-distanced audience sound? Thunderous enough, as the response to Sir András Schiff’s back-to-back recitals at the Wigmore Hall proved. On both Sunday and Monday evenings, the happy few of 112 – the venue’s Covid-era maximum – did their depleted best to raise the roof in answer to Schiff’s unstintingly, and typically, lavish commitment.

A muse of fire descended on the top floor of a former warehouse in the East End, unextinguished by the rain which fell almost continuously outside during the four stupendous concerts – three advertised, one a generous bonus – of the Ragged Music Festival.

This concert by Sir Bryn Terfel and the Britten Sinfonia, the very first concert given at the Barbican in front of an audience since 15 March, was surely in need of some stronger explanation than that offered by the blurb for the evening, namely “comfort and familiarity” and a “remedial tonic of an evening.”

Salzburg, Verbier and other high-end festivals have scraped together reduced, still impressive programmes over the summer for consumption online. Not so starrily cast but hardly less engaging in situ is the adapted offering from Istanbul, mixing local and international artists, chamber and orchestral concerts with a flair that belies its reputation on the fringe of the major music festivals.

Like many musicians, Danny Driver had not given a recital since the pandemic took hold in March. His return to the platform took place in the intense spotlight of the Wigmore Hall, broadcast live in BBC Radio 3’s Lunchtime Concert and webcast to the world - for which he chose a programme that was demanding, exposed and imaginative and rose to its ferocious challenges as if butter wouldn’t melt. 

There should eventually be a plaque on the outside of the Fidelio Orchestra Café in Farringdon, to the effect that London’s musical life after lockdown re-ignited here. And how, in early July, with Steven Isserlis exuberantly stepping up to play Bach before a rapt small audience.