Harald Genzmer: Music for Trautonium Peter Pichler (mixture trautonium) (Paladino Music)

Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari has never quite been a one-work composer. No points for knowing the fizzy overture to his delightful 1909 pro-smoking comedy Il segreto di Susanna; quite a few more if you know the whole opera. Extra credit for being able to hum the once popular "Serenata" from I gioielli della Madonna: but move on to his major operas – L’amore medico, say, or I quatro rusteghi – and we’re definitely into specialist territory.

Revelations in the classical year never stop coming. Even the week before Christmas yielded two performances as good as you're going to get: the sheer effervescence and light-flourishing of Lucy Crowe in ecstatic Bach and Mozart with La Nuova Musica, and Sheku Kanneh-Mason in Haydn's C major Cello Concerto. So any sifting of 2016's musical riches needs to put the truly one-off packages at the top of the list.

Sheku Kanneh-Mason isn't just BBC Young Musician 2016 - he's the year's top player in my books, a master at any level. Despite a contract with Decca, starting with the Shostakovich First Cello Concerto he played in the competition finale, he looks likely to remain loyal to family and friends, including the Fantasia Orchestra, founded this year, in which he's already played as part of the cello section.

Two things to note in Thursday’s Hallé performance at the Bridgewater Hall: the debut in the Manchester main series of their highly talented new assistant conductor, Jonathon Heyward, and another stride along the road towards the Hallé/Elder complete edition of the Vaughan Williams symphonies. Oh, and there was a very fine piece of virtuoso violin playing from James Ehnes, whose performance of Bruch's Second Violin Concerto would probably have been the headliner in any other circumstances … and the revelation of an unusual piece by Janáček.

The Lobgesang "lies very near my heart," wrote Mendelssohn. And the composer was so self-critical that the published order of his symphonies bears no resemblance to their composition: this "Hymn of Praise", known as the Second, was the penultimate before his symphonic masterpiece, the "Scottish". It is more often performed in recording studios, to satisfy recording companies’ hunger for complete cycles, than in concert, at least outside the composer’s native Germany.

It's harder for young professional musicians to be judged in standard repertoire – the very greatest music, in short – than to make their mark tackling the unknown in a wacky venue. High levels of energy and technical skill married to interpretations with something to say are what it takes, and what we got from the London Firebird Orchestra last night.

Istanbul six weeks before the failed coup, the south-west coast of Turkey six weeks after: what's the difference? None that I could see; once past the Turkish Airlines flights, with literature and screen full of the "People's Victory", there was no sign of it at the D-Marin Classical Music Festival on the Bodrum peninsula, centred around the marina in Turgutreis, a 45-minute drive along a very built-up coastline from once-quiet Bodrum.

It's never easy readjusting to the weird and sometimes wonderful acoustics of Albert's colosseum at Proms time, least of all when the first thing you hear there comes from a period-instrument band. Tuning in to Jérémie Rhorer's Le Cercle de l'Harmonie didn't take too long, however, while the urgent projection and diction of a splendid new Italian soprano on the block, Rosa Feola, did the hall proud. And all this to a packed house of 5,000 or so – not bad for relatively unknown performers, though the neat Mozart-Mendelssohn programme must have helped to sell all the seats.

James MacMillan: Since it was the day of Preparation Hebrides Ensemble/William Conway, with Brindley Sherratt (bass), Synergy Vocals (Delphian)