There was a wonderful festal spirit at the Wigmore Hall last night, as the vocal ensemble Stile Antico ran through a Greatest Hits selection in celebration of their 20^th anniversary, in front of a packed and enthusiastic audience. The 12-strong group still boasts four founder members, but this was swelled to 10 for the final item, as a swarm of alumni joined in a beautiful rendition of Gibbons’ The Silver Swan.

Huw Watkins’ Concerto for Orchestra, the fourth new work of his to be commissioned and premiered by the Hallé and Sir Mark Elder, is another beautifully crafted and highly appealing construction.

It’s also intriguing in its game-playing with genre, in almost a mirror image of the way his First Symphony was back in 2017. That, a two-movement piece, was undoubtedly symphonic by the time it reached its somewhat surprising ending, but managed to give the impression of being a concerto for orchestra at many points along the way.

When Giuseppe Torelli made the journey from his birthplace of Verona to Bologna in the late 17th century, the trumpet was still seen as something of a brash outsider, suitable for military displays but not for sophisticated music ensembles. Within decades, it would seem perfectly natural for both Vivaldi and Bach to write major works featuring the trumpet.

I came to Isata and Sheku Kanneh-Mason’s Wigmore Hall recital on Saturday armed with a certain degree of scepticism. Not about the siblings’ stupendous talent and technique – their manifold achievements speak for themselves – but about the popular idea that family connections make for closer, more cohesive music-making. 

Transcendence is everywhere in Mahler’s most ambitious symphony, from the flaming opening hymn to the upper reaches in the epic setting of Goethe’s Faust finale. You’d think no visuals could match the auditory phantasmagoria, just as dance, music and design flunked the essence of Paradiso in the Royal Ballet’s The Dante Project. Mahler does compose a kind of concert opera in Part Two, though; sound, movement and image accorded well.

“Let the music guide your imagination” was never going to be the slogan of the Southbank Centre’s Multitudes festival. Its 13 events offer parallel visions, intended in the case of Ravel’s Daphnis et Chloé (a shared project between the LPO and Australian dance company Circa I regret missing), not so in Shostakovich’s Tenth Symphony: as that masterpiece begins to be freed of its Soviet-era load, William Kentridge shackles it again on his own brilliant terms.

In a programme note for the St John Passion at the Barbican, the Academy of Ancient Music’s chief executive called their Easter performances of Bach’s compressed gospel tragedy a “ritual”. You understand why that word claims its place. However, there’s not much consciously liturgical about the AAM’s musical approach.

Never make your mind up too soon about any large-scale work by a genius. Back in 2010, I had my doubts about James MacMillan’s first Passion, hearing in the impact of Colin Davis’s Barbican performance a halfway house between the composer's shattering best and his more contrived side.

The name Arthur Bliss always summoned up for me the image of a fuddy-duddy old buffer writing boring music. But as I’ve discovered his work over the last few years – initially prompted by Paul Spicer’s excellent 2023 biography – I have realised this is not fair, and he’s actually a very interesting composer. This year’s 50^th anniversary of his death has seen a push by the Bliss Trust to increase his visibility, with perhaps the most high-profile being the run-out for his Piano Concerto with the RPO at Cadogan Hall last night.

The London Choral Sinfonia are a very impressive group, a professional choir who are churning out terrific recordings at a breakneck pace – I reviewed their latest release of Malcolm Arnold on theartsdesk only last week – as well as a busy schedule of live concerts and educational outreach.

At Smith Square Hall last night there was another aspect of their work on view, a commitment to new music in the form of a premiere of a large-scale new piece and, if I had my reservations about it, that commitment and ambition is still very much to be applauded.