Janáček: Sinfonietta, Dvořak: Symphony No.9 Anima Eterna Brugge/Jos van Immerseel (Alpha Classics)

Dvořák, Suk, Janáček: Violin Concertos Josef Špaček (violin), Czech Philharmonic Orchestra/Jiří Bělohlávek (Supraphon)

Over the past decade Krystian Zimerman and  Sir Simon Rattle have created and evolved a performing idea of Brahms’s D minor piano concerto which is still remarkable for its considered weight and grimly imposing grandeur, Michelangelo’s Mosè in music.

You’ve booked the iconic Czech Philharmonic Orchestra and their charismatic chief conductor Jiří Bělohlávek to do a whistle-stop UK tour. Hoorah. But what do you get them to play? The mind boggles with programming possibilities. A symphony by Martinů? Janáček’s Taras Bulba? Suk’s Asrael? Naah – what you do, inevitably, is look at the Classic FM Hall of Fame and ask them to perform The Lark Ascending and the Bruch G minor Concerto.

Reviews of English National Ballet in which I rave about what Tamara Rojo is doing for the company are getting to be the norm round here. This one is no exception, and I'm not even going to apologise for it.  Last night was the opening of Modern Masters, an ambitious new bill in which the company more than prove they're up to handling the big beasts of late twentieth-century choreography.

Search for shops which still sell classical CDs and it’s likely that you’ll be disappointed, in the UK at least. Peruse the surviving major labels’ lists of new releases and the reissues often outnumber the new recordings. But we live in an age when it’s never been cheaper, or easier, to discover good music in great performances. You just need to know where to look. Scanning an online retailer’s catalogue will never be as enjoyable as browsing through the racks in a well-run shop, but it means that virtually anything can be obtained within a few days at the click of a mouse.

As I sat, engaged and occasionally charmed but not always as impressed as I’d been told I would be, through violinist-animateur Richard Tognetti’s lightish seven-course taster menu of string music with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, it was worth bearing two things in mind. One was that this happened to be merely the official zenith of a truly enlightened three-part project; on Monday, parts of the programme had been played first to educate all ages and later to grab a young audience in more relaxed mode as part of the OAE’s pioneering Night Shift series.

Dvořák’s rustic operetta sits, swinging its legs rather diffidently, historically somewhere between the neverland Bohemia of Smetana’s The Bartered Bride and the lacerating reality of village life in Janáček'’s Jenůfa. The Cunning Peasant’s charms lie in its string of sophisticated songs and dances, more through-composed than Smetana’s, and in the abundance of not over-taxing roles, as well as chorus numbers, it offers to students.

Even as orchestras began to sound more and more alike, there was the Czech Philharmonic. And many of its notable characteristics remain to this day: a modest, homespun quality, warm and engaging and full of bright-eyed distinction in the woodwinds.