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Ben Gernon conducted the BBC Philharmonic in Manchester’s Bridgewater Hall in colourful Stravinsky and soulful Tchaikovsky, while Cooper encapsulated this in Mozart.

Rimsky-Korsakov literally wrote the book on orchestration. In this splendid LPO concert tracing Stravinsky’s music, Vladimir Jurowski focused on the composer’s debt to his friend and mentor.

Often, an enthusiastic response to a performance is nothing remarkable. Here, it certainly was. 

Rachmaninov's The Bells proved the highlight of Prom 43, with fabulous soloists and huge choral forces who stole the show in the third movement.

Substituting on short notice, Simone Lamsma made a very strong impression in Benjamiin Britten's austere Violin Concerto.

With the double bicentenary of Verdi and Wagner this year, other musical landmarks risk being eclipsed. But this October “La Verdi” commemorate the 140th anniversary of Rachmaninov’s birth with a series of concerts and lectures featuring all four of his piano concertos alongside works by other Russian greats.

Whilst a celebratory centenary performance of Stravinsky’s masterful The Rite of Spring has already been planned next month on the very evening of the work’s première, another performance of the work has recently captured the imagination of Paris’ music and dance aficionados: Stravinsky en mode hip hop (“Stravinsky, hip-hop style”).

Stravinsky’s Scherzo Fantastique, Op. 3 is one of his earliest works, as its opus number would suggest. There are very few composers who can truly create a fairytale atmosphere in their music, but Stravinsky was one of the best at it.