Live, Video: Kritiken zu klassischen Konzerten, Opern, Ballett und Tanz finden | Sir Colin Davis

While Weber is widely acknowledged as being of historic importance as the link in the German operatic tradition between Beethoven and Wagner, his operas are rarely staged in England, and even in concert remain a relative novelty. Curious because this is music of the utmost vitality and beauty and at times he surely borders on genius.

The last opera of the Mozart/Da Ponte cycle – the second of the composer’s operas to be performed in this Mozart-dominated season at the Royal Opera House – Così fan tutte pivots on two pairs of young lovers whose affection is put to the test by an old ‘philosopher’, Don Alfonso. Women, the old man argues, are all the same: never constant in their love, never loyal to their men.

If he could, would Beethoven have chosen Mitsuko Uchida to première his final piano concerto? They certainly seem to inhabit the same creative plane, at once revelling in the innovative – nay, revolutionary – features, whilst enjoying the grand connections with their historical precedents too.

With his Piano Concerto No. 4 in G, the centerpiece in the concert with the London Symphony Orchestra on Sunday, Beethoven took the classical concerto format he had inherited into uncharted waters. The work opens with a series of piano chords, which the orchestra takes up, develops and kneads into riveting thematic material before the soloist returns.

When you go to a student opera production, even at an institution as prestigious as the Royal Academy of Music, you don't expect to see one of the opera world's conducting legends in the pit. But that's precisely what we had at last night's performance of Berlioz's Béatrice et Bénédict, in the shape of Sir Colin Davis (CH, CBE), a man with several thousand opera performances on the clock.

Sibelius – whose unique voice straddles Romanticism, folk music, and the inklings of Modernism – can be a tricky composer to perform. His lush, expansive sonorities can sound simply loud and louder, plowing over the singable melodies and tiny gestures later transformed into full-blown themes. Not so in the hands of Sir Colin Davis.

Mitsuko Uchida's dress presented a challenge for the colour-blind eye, but she left no unanswered chromatic questions for the ear. From a dramatically exposed initial entry, through the poignant lyricism of the second movement, to the brilliance of the finale, Uchida's playing was marked by an intensity of thought, mastery of colour, and musical commitment.

The last of this season’s Proms Choral Sundays featured one of the most complex of all choral works, Beethoven’s massive Missa Solemnis, written around the time of his 9th symphony. Sir Colin Davis likened performing it to “Failing to reach the top of Mount Everest”, and Sara Mohr-Pietsch (in her excellent Proms Plus talk) mentioned the description of “the most famous work you have never heard”.

Among the LSO’s many attributes is their bold and rich sound, those enormous waves of music that pin you to your seat at the very back of the Barbican Centre.

Sir Colin Davis is a man whose name has become synonymous with exceptional classical music. And after over 50 years with the London Symphony Orchestra, the nuances of performance have become second-nature to him. But audiences were in for a treat Sunday night: the LSO offered audiences a rare opportunity to experience new music by two exceptional young musicians.

I've commented before about Die Zauberflöte that if you get the music right, the rest will follow. In the first night of the Royal Opera's latest revival of David MacVicar's 2003 production, Sir Colin Davis definitely got the music right.