Balance and depth take center stage as the Festival of New Trumpet Music begins in Brooklyn

Seven Storey Mountain, the title of Trappist monk Thomas Merton’s autobiography, is a reference to the mountain of purgatory in Dante’s Inferno. It is also, fittingly, the title of trumpeter Nate Wooley’s song cycle – meant to represent “a certain abandon found in religious practice within the confines of a composed work for instrumentalists”.

Now they know how many cacti it takes to fill the Albert Hall. Last night’s marathon John Cage Prom finished up, over three hours after it had started, with a wonderfully cactus-heavy performance of Branches (1976).

The contrasting delights of Schumann, Brahms and Dvořák are powerfully evoked in performances of charm, eloquence and high drama from the Philharmonia, continuing the orchestra’s 80th anniversary celebrations. 

The music of Glinka, Stravinsky, Rachmaninov and Tchaikovsky fills Manchester’s Bridgewater Hall with mystery, intrigue and jollity. 

Seong-Jin Cho’s premise in Prokofiev is compelling – to reconcile Russian gravitational attack and monumental construction with clarity, colour and contrapuntal legibility.

From Haydn and Beethoven to Weinberg and Rachmaninov, Marc-André Hamelin reveals the piano sonata as a form of breadth, flexibility and expressive power.