As you might expect from a Manic Street Preachers gig, literary influences were never far away. A DH Lawrence quote was prominently displayed on the video wall before the group took the stage, and band lyrics would randomly flash up throughout the ensuing performance. This occasionally raised an unintentional eyebrow, as when “Scream to a Sigh” was accompanied by I am a Relic lighting up – somewhat ironic for a group now so long-lasting they’re into a fourth decade.

It had begun to seem that Jon Hamm, whatever other roles he might appear in, was destined to be forever remembered exclusively as Mad Men’s Don Draper. Character and actor had made such a perfect fit that it was impossible to prise them apart. I always liked the idea of Hamm as a retro-James Bond set in Ian Fleming’s original 1950s period, but they wouldn’t listen.

Víkingur Ólafsson had something to prove at the Wigmore Hall. And prove it he did, even if, this time, his Goldberg Variations left a few features of Bach’s inexhaustible keyboard panorama at the edge of his pianistic picture. The much-loved Icelandic chart-topper had promised Beethoven’s final three sonatas for this concert. His last-minute reversion to the familiar Goldbergs – which he played on 88 occasions around the world last season after a supremely successful DG recording – had disappointed a portion of his vast fan-base.

The writer Amy Ng has made a sterling effort in digging up the true story behind her new play at the Kiln, Shanghai Dolls, but sadly has not yet found the best way to project this interesting material. 

There was a change of conductor from the one advertised for this BBC Philharmonic performance at the Bridgewater Hall – but the one who we heard from was an interpreter of extraordinary vision and intensity. Yoel Gamzou is also a composer in his own right, and a Mahler specialist, it would seem: he’s made his own completion of the Tenth Symphony, so he’s no doubt as aware of the language and creative imagination of that other composer-conductor as anyone.

Are we really in “a new era of male anger, societal discontent and rage”? This is what Royal Court artistic director David Byrne claims in the programme of Manhunt, Robert Icke’s new documentary play about Raoul Moat. Weak thought, because surely there has never been a decade in which toxic masculinity was not a problem.

I was in Germany last week, and nearly every town I went to was advertising a St Matthew or a St John Passion taking place in the week up to Easter. It says something about how deeply engrained Bach’s Passion settings are in German culture that they can muster up so many performances while, in most years, we in Scotland get only one for the whole country.

It seems a bizarre idea. Take a pivotal film in American culture that reset the perception of The Great American Dream at this, obviously, pivotal moment in American culture in which The Great American Dream, for millions, is being literally swiped away at gunpoint, And… make it into a musical? 

In October 1967, John Lee Hooker released a single titled “The Motor City is Burning.” The song commented on the civil unrest which had taken place in his Michigan home city of Detroit that July. “Oh, the motor city's burnin',” sang Hooker. “My home town burnin' down to the ground, Worser than Vietnam, Well, it started on 12th and Clairmont, this mornin'.”

When you’ve already come as close as possible to perfection in the greatest masterpiece, why risk a repeat performance with a difference? Because Bach’s St Matthew Passion needs to be an annual fixture without routine, and because inspirational IBO director Peter Whelan can be guaranteed not only to recapture the magic but to try a few new things, and to choose new soloists with fine judgement.