You can't expect a full house when the only work approaching a repertoire staple on your programme is Berg's Lulu Suite. Yet Esa-Pekka Salonen was able to serve up what must count as one of the most enthralling Philharmonia programmes ever at the Southbank Centre simply by spotlighting four different styles surfacing in the anything-goes musical world of Weimar Germany.

Kings Place Hall One is a slightly strange venue, its small stage size seeming out of proportion for the dimensions of the room. It means only a chamber orchestra can fit on stage – and even then they often look uncomfortably squashed, especially with a piano for company.

Throughout his 11 years as Principal Conductor of the London Philharmonic Orchestra to date, Vladimir Jurowski has focused on two elements, programme-wise: tellingly-linked concerts of the rich and rare, and fine-tuned interpretations of the repertoire's cornerstones over the seasons.

The mid-1930s, when the Nazi government replaced the Weimar republic, was a bleak time for the composers featured in last night’s Philharmonia concert. Arnold Schoenberg was the first to leave for the US, followed by Paul Hindemith in 1938. Alban Berg avoided emigration only by the extreme measure of dying, suddenly, in 1935.

Manchester Camerata’s series of in-concert recordings featuring Mozart piano concertos with Jean-Efflam Bavouzet is well under way now, and this programme, like others before it, included a couple of his opera overtures too. Why so?

The Hallé Orchestra has a good track record when it comes to bringing in young talents with exciting prospects, and its 2019-20 season begins with the newly appointed Finnish chief conductor designate of the Oslo Philharmonic, Klaus Mäkelä, on the rostrum, and the young Icelander Víkungur Ólafsson as solo pianist.

Celebrating the friendship between the two great 20th-century composers, the Britten-Shostakovich Festival Orchestra launched this year.

While the Proms were ringing out the old season, the Wigmore Hall ushered in the big celebration of 2020: the 250^th anniversary of Ludwig van Beethoven’s birth. The venue’s year-long festival (actually longer – the actual birthday is December ‘20) kicked off with a Beethoven weekend with more than just Beethoven in it.

Any festival would be proud and honoured to end with the great Elisabeth Leonskaja playing the last three Beethoven piano sonatas. Here the Everest was swiftly scaled as the tenth concert of a packed Wigmore Hall weekend.

Simon Rattle has a knack for unearthing large-scale orchestral works that pack a punch. Olivier Messiaen’s Éclairs sur l’Au-Delà … (Illuminations of the Beyond …) was completed in 1991, a year before the composer’s death, and is both a reflection on mortality and a summation of his life’s work.