Venue: Metropolitan Museum of Art, Grace Rainey Rogers Auditorium, New York City

El Cimarrón proved worthy of both stage and museum, presenting the story of Esteban Montejo, born into slavery in Cuba in 1869 and later escaping to live in the forest.

Ryuichi Sakamoto and Alva Noto performed their masterful and engaging duo set at Rogers Auditorium in the Metropolitan Museum of Art Wednesday night, with the glamor and poise that such a venue implies.

The loosely-affiliated Metropolitan Museum Artists in Concert, now in its ninth season at the museum, illustrates all that is good about music-making among friends – and even family members. Two sets of siblings and numerous old friends were on stage for a concert of music inspired by the completion of the museum’s new wing of American art.

To accompany the exhibition “The Renaissance Portrait from Donatello to Bellini,” the early music ensemble TENET held court at the Metropolitan Museum of Art for a lovely concert of musical portraits from the late fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.

The Pacifica Quartet, now in its third year of residency at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, has the formidable task of taking up the role occupied by the Guarnieri Quartet, which played there for 43 of its 45 years. The Pacifica is relatively young, a year or so shy of its tenth birthday, but holds the promise of a venerable ensemble in the making, with chops and class to prove it.

I greatly anticipated the New York debut concert of two new European stars, cellist Gautier Capuçon and pianist Gabriela Montero. Both are artists of great passion and intensity, and they chose a program of works that reflected their myriad gifts – one mid-20th century, one early Romantic, and the last, late Romantic in style.

To say that the diminutive Mr Kadouch is a very gifted young pianist with a brilliant technique and a bright future is an understatement. The program overall was very well-played.