Venue: Elbphilharmonie, Hamburg

Despite some fine young voices, a concert staging of The Rake's Progress proves problematic in Hamburg.

An outstanding account of Smetana's Ma vlást in Hamburg's Elbphilharmonie was prefaced by Straussian oboe nostalgia courtesy of Albrecht Mayer. 

Berg, unlike his teacher Schoenberg, didn't throw out the baby with the bathwater; Bruckner too never forgot his traditional roots. The NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchester, Paavo Järvi and Laura Aikin demonstrate.

A concerto was the sandwich, and a very fine one too, but no overture and no symphony: who else would have married Skalkottas and Prokofiev with Mozart's last piano concerto?

Jump-in concerts can occasionally advance career prospects. Jonathan Bloxham with the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen demonstrated the lightness of Mendelssohn in C minor but seriously underplayed the darkness of Schubert in B minor.

A sparkling if challenging first half of Haydn and Schnittke, splendidly delivered by the NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchester, but with shortcomings in the conductor's approach to Tchaikovsky's largest symphonic score.

Teodor Currentzis, on tour with the SWR Symphony Orchestra, pairs two Russian masterpieces written a century apart: Tchaikovsky's Fifth Symphony and Schnittke's Viola Concerto with Antoine Tamestit.