At the risk of sounding like a scratched record (or a cracked CD), it’s reassuring to know that you can still buy new recordings in physical formats. Granted, CDs do take up shelf space, but in most cases they sound better than most downloads and usually come with sleeve notes and texts. 

While the call for livening up the concert format remains dubious – beyond unusual settings and a will to communicate, the rest is window-dressing – there’s always a special buzz about festival-like concatenations of events. For that reason, four one- or two-day chamber spectaculars have stood out for me this year.

Quite apart from the stunning range of colours and phrasing, Pavel Kolesnikov’s recitals always give you much more than the programme promises. A golden thread through shorter pieces has been one approach, but here he did something different – sailed for the deep waters only in three chameleonic masterpieces, but suggested the connections by unveiling an unnamed work he asked us to listen to in “metaphorical darkness”.

St Mark’s shadow fell gloriously over the Wigmore Hall last night with a programme of Christmas music performed in, or inspired by, the great basilica of Venice. The Dunedin Consort braided festive works from pioneers who wrote for its grandly sonorous spaces – Gabrieli, Monteverdi, Grandi – with pieces by their German visitor and student Heinrich Schütz, culminating with his Christmas Story (1660).

In Márta’s Garden Katharina Weber (piano) (Intakt)

Across three and a half decades, John Eliot Gardiner’s 1987 recording of Bach’s Christmas Oratorio with his Monteverdi Choir and English Baroque Soloists spoiled one for live performances. Not that many of those weren’t equally fine and alive in different ways, but none I experienced gave us all six, equally glorious cantatas.

At this of year there is always a good range of seasonal choral concerts on offer in London – and an audience for them all, weather and strikes permitting. But while I enjoy a canter through Carols for Choirs as much as anyone, I am perhaps more drawn to something offering some novelty. I was well-rewarded in this respect by Echo Vocal Ensemble and Friends in their programme “Chasing the Night” at Kings Place yesterday.

What do you do when your high-achieving ensemble has just been dealt a brutal, capricious blow, but you have the most joyfully festive work in the repertoire on your seasonal agenda? To say that the Britten Sinfonia came out with all trumpets (and timpani, and oboes d’amore) blazing would be the feeblest of understatements.

William Thomas has fast made an impact as a rapidly rising (or should that be descending?) star of the bass world. Though he has only recently graduated from the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, his awards include Winner of the Veronica Dunne International Competition and Winner of the Critics’ Circle Award for Young Talent.

Sibelius and Mahler so often figure as the irreconcilable chalk and cheese of turn-of-the-century orchestral writing that it can be a salutary experience to hear them together on one bill.