At the age of 83, Martha Argerich contains more personality in her little finger than many people do in their entire bodies.

It would be hard to find an antihero more anti than Eugene Onegin. The protagonist of Alexander Pushkin’s long verse novel of 1833 is a wrecker of lives. Charismatically handsome yet arrogant, cynical and bored, his effect on those who fall under his spell is toxic. And yet in the mid-1960s his story suggested itself as material for a ballet so luminous and compelling that it has outlived its choreographer by more than half a century.

There was excellent music making in the Hallé concert in Manchester last night, and there was self-admitted “noise”. Briefly, the two coincided in one work.

No new production of a beloved old ballet can please everyone, and there is none more beloved, or more frequently produced, than The Nutcracker. English National Ballet has staked its identity on performing Tchaikovsky’s last, most hummable and most festive ballet every Christmas since 1950, turning out a fresh reading every few years.

A time must come again when British orchestras return to complete Tchaikovsky ballet scores in concert, as in the BBC glory days of the great Rozhdestvensky. We were halfway there with The Nutcracker's second act in Mark Wigglesworth’s second programme as the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra’s Chief Conductor. The "first act” was in any case a shimmering miracle too, a true partnership with another collegial master, Boris Giltburg, in Rachmaninov’s Third Piano Concerto.

Emotional truth is elusive in Tchaikovsky’s “lyrical scenes” after Pushkin’s verse-novel. Overstress every feeling, as conductor Henrik Nánási did last night, and you leave some of us in the audience feeling manipulated. Play it cool, which is what we mostly get in Ted Huffman’s new production, and the heart is similarly untouched.

Discussing 1971’s The Music Lovers with writer John Baxter, director Ken Russell suggested, among other things, that “music and facts don’t mix”. They don’t always line up here, but this film does stand up as a worthy successor to the BBC’s Delius: Song of Summer and Dance of the Seven Veils, the latter deemed so offensive by the Strauss estate that it remained unseen for 50 years.

Under its master music director, the once-torpid Royal Philharmonic Orchestra has given us some of the most brilliant concerts of the 2023-4 season. Their Prom together changed course from the Elgar/Rachmaninov theme and dared even more, placing together four works in three parts each – two with atmospheric outer sections flanking vivid ceremonials (Ives, Debussy), two placing the lyricism at the dead centre (Ravel, Tchaikovsky).

Continuing the relationship with choreographer Örjan Andersson – who choreographed their landmark project Goldberg Variations – Scottish Ensemble gave the first of their latest movement-inspired performance, Impulse: Music in Motion in Glasgow on Friday evening.