Is it ever a good idea to programme two symphonies by one composer in a single concert? Maverick Valery Gergiev is likely to stand alone in applying the rule to Mahler. Yet curiously his Prom marathon of two big instalments made more sense as stages on a journey than yoking together the outwardly less time-consuming symphonic adventures of Sibelius. Jukka-Pekka Saraste's attempt last night to run the opposing approaches of the last two Sibelius symphonies head to head worked no better than usual.

William Mathias: Piano Concertos 1 & 2; Vaughan Williams: Fantasy for Piano and Orchestra Mark Bebbington (piano) Ulster Orchestra/George Vass (Somm)

The rest, it seems, is not to remain quite silence from the 32 years Jean Sibelius lived on after completing his last major work, the astonishing incidental music for a production of The Tempest in 1925.

With Riccardo Chailly's Leipzig Beethoven series well into its capacious stride, another cycle of symphonies keeping unusual company begins. This one featuring the BBC Symphony Orchestra will take longer and features six conductors, four of them known masters of their subject, chimerical Sibelius. The only problem last night was that Sakari Oramo, in tandem with his charismatic soprano wife Anu Komsi, took us to such strange and wonderful places in the first concert that I want them both back for the next five.

Isn’t it strange how national talent goes by subject? Put on a blockbuster exhibition of Dutch painting and the queue will stretch to the Embankment. But can you imagine a festival of Dutch music? Sweelinck (d 1652) and Andriessen (b 1939) more or less sums it up. The BBC brought together three living Dutch composers for this Portrait concert, and one of them wasn’t after all Dutch (“I’ve kept my Swedish passport,” he insisted rather unchivalrously in the pre-concert interview).

Ravel: Complete Music for Violin and Piano Alina Ibragimova, Cédric Tiberghien (Hyperion)

What a difference a change of scene makes. During Sakari Oramo’s 10 years at the helm of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra he wasn’t exactly diffident; but you felt you could invite him to tea without any crockery getting broken. Now, I’m not so sure. Last night at the Proms, conducting one of his three current babies, the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra, his arms spun like windmills. His torso lunged to the left, then to the right. With energetic facial expressions he made love, picked a fight, grinned like a clown - whatever was needed to propel the emotional dramas of his all-Scandinavian programme. And the orchestra seemed wired to his every move. I’ve never heard such an exciting or compelling performance of Nielsen’s Symphony No 4, The Inextinguishable – the symphony with the duelling timpani, and certainly inextinguishable on Monday night.

It was partly as penance for having missed the previous evening's Czech festival that I arena-prommed for last night's Moravian finale, to be happily strafed by the nine extra trumpets of Janáček's Sinfonietta.

This week’s reviews include a generous Liszt anthology played by one of the 20th century’s most fondly remembered pianists. There’s a reissued box of Beethoven symphonies performed on modern instruments by one of the classiest European orchestras. Heading further north, we've a repackaged set of Sibelius symphonies with some essential extras.

With regional youth orchestras dropping from a thousand short-sighted, wholesale cuts - flagship Leicestershire the latest under threat - it should be enough just to celebrate 60 seasons of the LSSO, safe for now under the City of London's munificent wing. But last night was more than just another fun concert. No one ought to miss any appearance of the, ahem, enormously charismatic Leif Segerstam, composer of 244 symphonies to date and master orchestral trainer, who always goes for depth of sound rather than surface glitter.