Werk: Sonata no. 4, for violin and piano, "Children's Day at the Camp Meeting"

The contemporary music festival Milano Musica is this year dedicated to the works of Morton Feldman, a man who professed to be more influenced by contemporary art and Persian rugs than he was by other music. The concert took place in Gallerie d’Italia, a former bank now a contemporary art gallery, and pulled together pieces for violin and piano by Feldman and his American contemporaries.

Last Sunday, Pekka Kuusisto performed in Siuntio, a Finnish town not so far from Helsinki, as part of the Lux Musicae Festival, together with pianist Joonas Ahonen and hornist Hervé Joulain. In the penumbra of the candles and the gentle lights of a beautiful church from the 1400s, the first notes of Brahms’ Violin Sonata in G major resounded. Kuusisto’s sound is all about the power of simplicity.

If the Cadogan Hall’s “Celebrity Recital Series” conjures up unwelcome memories of Jordan’s brief career as a singer, never fear: the Hall has attracted a very different type of famous figure. Hilary Hahn is as unlike Katie Price as could be imagined: small, dark and unassuming, you could pass her in the street without a second glance.