Despite Proms appearances, I'm still not sure that Tom Fetherstonhaugh, mover and shaker of the young Fantasia Orchestra, has yet had quite the limelight he deserves for original programming that reaches out, not to mention for the sleek and romantic sound he got from a relatively small body of strings in this lovely sequence (portamentos as apt for Gershwin as for Mahler). Harry Baker also deserves full credit for a chain of wondrous arrangements.

There was so much to be thankful for throughout the three days I spent at the Aldeburgh Festival this year. First, of course, to have struck gold in so many of the concerts I caught was lucky enough in itself. But the context has never felt more vital as breezes cooled the beach at Aldeburgh and the Alde estuary at Snape while London sweltered in unnaturally high temperatures and a humidity quite different from the fresh airs of the Suffolk coast. 

The Royal Northern College of Music put four of its brightest hopes on show in last night’s big end-of-year concert at the Bridgewater Hall – a composer, a conductor, a solo pianist… and everyone else in its symphony orchestra and chorus.

During the calm evening before an apocalyptic London storm, trumpet virtuoso Håkan Hardenberger delighted the Barbican audience with not only the advertised two showcases for his peerless qualities of tone and expression, but a third as well. Neither Haydn nor Hummel could make it to applaud his deft and dashing accounts of their concertos; but the composer of the encore certainly did.

Berlioz's intended companion for his Symphonie fantastique was Lélio, or the Return to Life - an assemblage of mostly magical earlier pieces strung together with an autobiographical narration.

This beguiling “semi-staged” performance of Mahler’s First Symphony is the latest attempt in a growing movement to interrogate the relationship between classical music performers and their audiences. It’s strongly reminiscent of the point when theatre directors were ripping up the rulebook in the Nineties, whether they were staging their works in site-specific locations, plunging audiences into complete darkness, or subverting expectations with new uses of video projection and puppetry.

Range, I decided on Monday night, was what makes for great performances: range of emotions, dynamics, pitches. It was as true of Abel Selaocoe and his fine fellow musicians (★★★★★) as it had been of the Belcea Quartet with Tabea Zimmermann at the Wigmore Hall last week. The Wigmore also welcomed this team on Friday, and you can be sure that the programme and approach were different; you could also add to the various ranges the gamut from timeless improvisation to the tightest of shared rhythms. 

Danish by name, and very much Danish by appearance (the cellist is Norwegian, but we’ll let that go). This quartet combines a glorious selection of blonde beards and moustaches and eyelashes and floppy fringes with playing that is joyful and life-affirming, both in the sound the players produce, and the evident joy they have in playing together. This was my first time hearing the Danish Quartet, but I am determined it won’t be the last.

Richard Strauss, who conducted this orchestra and programme to an audience of 7000 in the Royal Albert Hall on 19 October 1947 aged 83, would have shared our mixed feelings about the curious phenomenon that is Santtu-Matias Rouvali, the now-80-year-old Philharmonia's Principal Conductor. Not for Strauss Santtu's expansive, sometimes sluggish approach to his most popular symphonic-poem calling card, Don Juan.

If the Wigmore Hall sought perfection in its 125th Anniversary Festival, it found it in the two concerts I've attended this week - in the greater part of Lise Davidsen's and James Baillieu's Schubert cornucopia, and last night in the sublime Belcea Quartet's teaming up with similarly legendary viola player Tabea Zimmermann in two awe-inspiring string quintet masterpieces.