No doubt about it, Leonidas Kavakos is one of the world's top 10 live-wire violinists. But here in London he seems to have sold himself a bit short recently with a less than great concerto repertoire (Korngold, Szymanowski's Second). Korngold furnished a springy intermezzo in last night's blockbuster recital, Szymanowski a ravishing second encore, but I went to hear two giddying masterpieces, Prokofiev's First Violin Sonata and Schubert's Fantasy in C. If unknown quantity Enrico Pace could manage to play Richter to Kavakos's David Oistrakh, it might turn out to be awe-inspiring. He did, so it was.

Busy, busy, busy tends to have been the watchword of Rudolf Nureyev’s elaborate choreographies. Prokofiev, as the most direct of musical dramatists, demanded streamlining from Sergey Radlov’s complicated scenario in 1935, but Nureyev tends to have jammed extra plotlines back in with un-Shakespearean knobs on. Thank heavens Patricia Ruanne, his Juliet for the initial four-week run back in 1977, and his first Tybalt, Frédéric Jahn, have returned to work so hard on the staging's fiddly bits as to make most of this accomplished revival seem like easy storytelling.

A glance at the programme hinted at the identity of the orchestra: you don’t perform Prokofiev’s Scythian Suite and Janáček’s Sinfonietta in the same evening unless you’ve industrial quantities of brass and percussion to spare. This was riveting, transcendent stuff, and the most uplifting evening I’ve spent in a concert hall for years. Plus, the echoing barn of Leeds Town Hall is the ideal size for a 170-piece orchestra, a perfect place to experience Janáček’s hocketing brass fanfares. This was the closing concert of the NYO’s winter tour, and an incredible achievement for an orchestra that only assembled two weeks ago.

What a stunning show Matthew Bourne has created in his Blitz-era Cinderella - truly a magical ride created from what was in its original 1997 form a pumpkin waiting to be transformed. This must be the most heartwarming and sophisticatedly rewarding Christmas show in London, filled with a huge love of the city and a moving homage to humanity in wartime.

Fairy-tale ballets are a bitch. We all grow a mental image of what is “right” when we are about five, and then woe betide anyone whose vision is different – because of course it isn’t different, it’s “wrong”. So David Bintley and his designer, John Macfarlane, are up against audiences chock-full of preconceived notions. And I’m happy to say, after BRB’s premiere of their new Christmas show last night, they passed my inner-five-year-old test with flying colours.

Is Shostakovich’s Eleventh a great, grim epic symphony worthy both of its toughest predecessors – 4, 8 and 10 – and of the 1905 massacre it avowedly commemorates, or long-winded film music too subservient to its revolutionary-song material? I used to think the latter, but three conductors have made me change my mind: Rostropovich, taking infinite care over the conjuring of icy Palace Square wastes, Semyon Bychkov winning over the BBC Symphony Orchestra at the Proms and now Vasily Petrenko, pulling off the most profound and surprising coup in what I once found the weakest movement, the finale.

Is Shostakovich’s Eleventh a great, grim epic symphony worthy both of its toughest predecessors – 4, 8 and 10 – and of the 1905 massacre it avowedly commemorates, or long-winded film music too subservient to its revolutionary-song material? I used to think the latter, but three conductors have made me change my mind: Rostropovich, taking infinite care over the conjuring of icy Palace Square wastes, Semyon Bychkov winning over the BBC Symphony Orchestra at the Proms and now Vasily Petrenko, pulling off the most profound and surprising coup in what I once found the weakest movement, the finale.

Christmas rolls around, and so does Cinderella, a welcome alternative to the seasonal dance-critic bah-humbug that is The Nutcracker. First, the good news. The good news is Marianela Nuñez. Always a lovely dancer, in Ashton she just glows. No one could be more suited than she to Ashton’s fiendishly difficult petite batterie, those tiny, beaten, viciously fast steps; no one could be more suited than she to Ashton’s light, bright jumps: with her sunny temperament and lovely punchy ballon Nuñez rises (literally) to the choreography’s demands.

She did more to make Prokofiev remembered and reassessed than most of the great performers.