Drawing an audience of five and a half thousand in to listen intently is harder than pushing out into the vasts of the Albert Hall. Yet it’s what seems to work best in this unpredictable space, and last night masterful veterans Elisabeth Leonskaja and Charles Dutoit knew exactly what to do. The results were romantic introspection in Mozart - an unfashionable but valid alternative to authentic sprightliness - and a Shostakovich Fifteenth Symphony that was more skull than skin, but a compellingly decorated skull for all that.

Various Artists: Ian Levine’s Stax Soul Sensations

America: The Warner Bros. Years 1971–1977

Multiple stars are born in The Diary of a Teenage Girl, the conventionally titled film premiered earlier this year at Sundance that turns out to be unconventional in every way that matters. Adapted from Phoebe Gloeckner's novel about a 15-year-old's coming of age in the swinging, drugs-soaked San Francisco of the 1970s, first-time director Marielle Heller has made one of the most probing films yet about that painful journey we all make through what Henry James so succinctly titled "the awkward age".

When a photographer is as little known as Shirley Baker, it is probably only natural that we scour her work for clues to the personality behind the camera. Certainly, Baker’s photographs of inner city Salford and Manchester, taken over a period of 20 years, seem to offer as full and intriguing a picture of Baker herself as of the disappearing communities she was committed to recording.

Sex Pistols: Spunk

Various Artists: Dust on the Nettles – A Journey Through the British Underground Folk Scene 1967–72

Lagoon, miasma and scirocco may seem as far away as you can get from the rolling hills and pleasant airs of the Wormsley Estate in deepest home counties territory. Nor are the bleached bones of Britten’s bleak if ultimately transformative operatic swansong the usual culinary fare many punters might have expected to go with their fine wines and gourmet picnics.

Peter Zinovieff: Electronic Calendar – The EMS Tapes

As its title might suggest, Christian Schwochow’s West (Westen) takes us back to the time of Germany divided. It's almost a chamber piece, catching the very particular experiences of a woman and her young son who leave East Berlin and end up in a refugee centre in the city’s American sector, where they’re forced to reappraise their expectations of what their new life in the West will be.