Pavel Kolesnikov returned to the Hallé last night with a bobby-dazzler of a concerto. He’s a laid-back dude in appearance, with no tie, flapping jacket and cool appearance – quite a contrast with the full evening dress worn by the orchestra members – but the music says it all for him.

Can experimental theatre survive the decades? This year marks the 40th anniversary of the Forced Entertainment theatre company, whose mission is summarised (by themselves) as “tearing up the rulebook”.

A quarter of an hour into The Problem With People, there’s a 15-second clip of Bill Forsyth’s Local Hero – and it’s the best thing about this spectacularly unfunny comedy co-written by its American star, Paul Reiser (Mad About You, The Kominsky Method, Stranger Things).

Tucker Zimmerman is singing a number called “Don’t Go Crazy (Go in Peace)”. At 83, he performs sitting down. Surrounded by support band Iji, who act as his pick-up, he approaches the song in a whispery, affable voice. At the start of his set he was assisted to his seat but, knees aside, he’s not frail. He’s just laid back, a Sixties original, strumming gently. “Don’t go crazy,” he sings, “Go with the flow, go in peace.” Although he’s advised us to not think about politics, it’s hard not to.

If you are bothered about climate change – and who isn’t? – you’ll soon come across references to the “energy transition”. Example? Look, here’s one in this week’s New Scientist, a full-page ad from Equinor, the rebranded Norwegian state-owned oil and gas giant. Why is Equinor, now styling itself an energy company, still exploring for new oil and gas deposits?

The latest true-crime adaptation about a murderous man and his female victims turns its star into a bloody mess on a hospital table, her vital signs flatlining. And that’s just halfway through, with two episodes to go. 

As Steven Isserlis announced just before the final work, in more senses than one, of a five-day revelation, the 79 year old Fauré’s last letter told his wife that “at the moment I am well, very well, despite the little bout of fatigue which is caused by the end of the Quartet. I am happy with everything, and I should like everyone to be happy all around me, and everywhere”.

The Catalan capital has given its name to a famous number in the Stephen Sondheim musical, Company. And here it is lending geographical specificity to the second two-hander, following the far-superior Camp Siegfried, from American writer Bess Wohl to reach London in recent years.

More than once during their barnstorming performance this weekend, Bobby Vylan, vocalist with Bob Vylan proclaimed from the stage of Birmingham’s O2 Institute that “We are the cutest band in punk rock. The friendliest band in rock’n’roll. The most important band in Great Britain”. He might just have been right.

The BBC Philharmonic were right to bill Garrick Ohlsson, soloist in Brahms’ Piano Concerto No. 1, as the main attraction in Saturday’s concert.

The septuagenarian American is a force of nature and an exceptional artist: his playing of Rachmaninov in his last visit to Manchester remains in the memory as an exhibition of mastery. So it was again, in another concerto thick with notes.