Two regrets and a tentative hope before full praise for what has to be the best complete Swan Lake in concert ever.

Why, in Lieder singing above all, should an outpouring of deep feeling so frighten critics? Alice Coote’s unabashed emotionalism as a recitalist can sometimes bring out the worst in the stiff-upper-lip brigade, as reactions to her high-impact Winterreise (last given at the Wigmore prior to the current lockdown) revealed. At least with Tchaikovsky’s song output, no one can plausibly claim that they really ought to be delivered with strait-laced placidity.

If dance lovers have learnt anything in recent months it's to take nothing for granted. How could we ever have been so blasé about The Nutcracker, whose annual reappearance in multiple productions was as inevitable as crowds on Oxford Street? As a long-departed dance critic once Eeyorishly observed, each year “brings us one Nutcracker closer to death”, a quip that now has a bleaker resonance than even he can have intended.

Berliner Philharmoniker/Kirill Petrenko: Music by Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, Franz Schmidt, Rudi Stephan (Berliner Philharmoniker Recordings)

“Live music is back,” runs the Barbican's latest slogan, so treasure it and get out there while you can. Thursday evening in London offered an embarrassment of riches. I chose the City of London Sinfonia live in Southwark Cathedral over the Kanneh-Masons on the other side of the Thames in the Barbican only because I knew I could catch up with the family live on screen later.

As Dvořák’s "Song to the Moon" from Rusalka rose to its impassioned climax, Natalya Romaniw had to battle a helicopter thumping overhead. The helicopter lost (well, of course it did). As Nardus Williams and David Butt Phillip disappeared into the wings after a heart-rending "O soave fanciulla" from La Bohème, a squirrel scampered centre-stage to fill the dramatic vacuum.

Holst: The Planets; Nielsen: Helios Overture Mythos (Bjarke Mogensen and Rasmus Schjaerff Kjøller, accordions) (Mythos)

Liberated from Pushkin’s salons, ballrooms and bedrooms, Barrie Kosky’s Eugene Onegin bursts out into nature. Tatyana and Olga lounge in the long grass stealing heavy fingerfuls of jam straight from the jar; party-guests run through the trees with flaming torches, dancing wildly, barefoot; after the harvest groups gather on the lawn with picnics and games. This is a world apart, the hot, hazy, endless summer of first love – an intense, but unreliable memory.

Bach: Christmas Oratorio Thomanerchor Leipzig, Gewandhausorchester Leipzig/Gotthold Schwarz (Accentus)

Josquin: Missa Mater Patris, Bauldeweyn: Missa Da pacem The Tallis Scholars/Peter Philips (Gimmell)