For the general public, getting to see the Mansion House in the City of London is almost as easy a task as becoming a dentist who specialises in hen’s teeth. But that was not the only reason for coming along to last night’s Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment’s concert conducted by Edward Gardner. For this City of London Festival programme contained a most teasing prospect. Alina Ibragimova, the most questing and lively young violinist of our time, was actually going to play a repertoire concerto.

Cafés, ballets, it’s all the same to the mighty petty bullyboys of the London Olympics, who have not only devised two of the most revolting mascots in Olympic history (the one-eyed slugs Wenlock and Mandeville) but also employed teams of apparatchiks in your name and mine to compel artists and small businesses not to infringe their entirely dubious copyright in the Olympic motto.

Norman Lebrecht, the seasoned and ever-alert musical commentator, thinks he and his readers may have uncovered someone making a very good stab at being Mozart. Three pieces have been discovered on the internet DIY-video channel being played by a pianist whose face can't be seen, all purporting to be new or obscure works by Mozart, Haydn and Mendelssohn.

Oberon in Frederick Ashton’s The Dream was the hurdle at which the ferociously promising young Sergei Polunin refused when he quit the Royal Ballet last week, and whether it was the deceptive complexity and difficulty of it that caused his sudden exit, last night’s opening gave his replacement, the brilliant Steven McRae, such a run for his money that it wouldn’t be surprising if the role had indeed left Polunin in a blue funk.

It’s been a while since Tori Amos did something as straightforward as writing a bunch of songs, recording them, and then releasing them as a CD. Her releases over the past decade or so have been, for instance, “themed” into horticultural compartments (The Beekeeper), or 12 cover versions of songs originally written by men but sung by Amos from the perspectives of 12 different female personae (Strange Little Girls).

Mendelssohn loved looking back. And nowhere more so than in his blockbuster oratorio, Elijah. But what was most striking about last night's monumental performance at the Proms was how much he was also clearly looking forward and outward, and how feeble an appellation oratorio seemed to be for what we were witnessing. We were being bombarded with pre-echoes of the adventure-laden Hollywood epics of the 1950s. We were being hit by a microclimate of such unstable energy that it could easily have registered on the Beaufort Scale. Prototype movie. Tropical hurricane.

"Anyone for Demis?" wasn’t the only question posed by this trawl through some of the foreign – not American - popular music that’s been hugged to our collective bosom. That the large, hirsute, kaftan-shrouded Greek wonder that’s Demis Roussos was popular is obvious. He landed in the Top 10 in 1975 with “Happy to be on an Island in the Sun” and became a chart regular for the next two years. Everyone was for Demis. The other poser was the self-cancelling, “Now that pop music’s gone global, has the appeal of the foreign pop song gone forever?”

Getting to Mull is an improbably romantic journey to classical music-making. One can easily understand why Mendelssohn was so affected by his experiences in Scotland – and Mull. On the three-hour train journey from Glasgow one sheds the habits of everyday life: the train winds through thickets of Forestry Commission plantations, which suddenly open out into wild panoramas of mountains and lochs, or a dramatic ruined castle against the skyline.

We are spoiled for choral choice in Britain. With the likes of The Sixteen, The King’s Singers, Polyphony and I Fagiolini just the start of the roster of talent, and an amateur choral scene of serious heft, the temptation is to look no further than the Channel for our choral kicks. Such is the growing presence of the Baltic nations however (and particularly Estonia, with its greatest musical champion, Arvo Pärt), that this rival tradition is increasingly making its presence felt. Greatest among a nation of choirs is unquestionably the Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir, who last night took us on a tour of their musical heritage.