The virtuoso oboe: Christopher Redgate, Michael Finnissy and Abbey Oboes

Last night was a busy night for classical music in London, with the Simón Bolívar Orchestra of Venezuela, the LSO and Bernard Haitink all performing in various places around the city. But the smart kids were avoiding all that at The Forge in Camden, chilling to the sweet, complicated sounds of Christopher Redgate and his microtonal oboe.

The young Spanish violinist proves an ardent advocate for a work originally dismissed as a “Hollywood Concerto” as the BBC Symphony Orchestra closes its Barbican season.

Songs and symphonies from Sir Simon Rattle and the London Symphony Orchestra, concluding with a vision of “heavenly life” from Gustav Mahler. 

Late Brahms, early Schoenberg: under Lahav Shani and the Rotterdam Philharmonic draw tenderness from two monumental scores. 

Come away fellow sailors, your anchors be weighing! All board the Cutty Sark for a semi-staging of Purcell's Dido and Aeneas with the Monteverdi Choir and English Baroque Soloists.

Fragments by Brahms, Schoenberg and Schubert orbit Beethoven's Waldstein and Schumann's Carnaval in another masterful recital from Sir Stephen Hough.