Prokofiev: Piano Concertos 1&3, Overture on Hebrew Themes Simon Trpčeski (piano), Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra/Vasily Petrenko (Onyx)

Talk about survival: St Petersburg, Petrograd, Leningrad, now again St Petersburg, all the same city, has it nailed down. It was founded through the mad enthusiasm, intelligence, determination and just off-the-scale energy of Peter the Great in 1703, built on the bodies of around 30,000 labourers (not the 300,000 that later rumours have suggested) at the whim of an Emperor.

"Generally speaking," writes Evgeny Kissin in one of the many generous tributes to those whose artistry he most admires, "the mastery of [Carlo Maria] Giulini is exactly what is dearest of all to me in art: simplicity, depth and spirituality". The same is true of the personality revealed in this slim but by no means undernourishing volume from one of our time's most fascinating pianists.

Koen Kessels is on a mission to change the culture around music in ballet. Anyone who has heard the Belgian conduct will know that he is the right person for the job: Kessels makes the classic scores come alive in the pit like nobody else I’ve heard. I will never forget a performance of Swan Lake with Birmingham Royal Ballet in which he had us all pinned to our seats with excitement, shaping every phrase of the familiar music as if it had never been heard before.

There are certain roles where you’re lucky to catch one perfect incarnation in a lifetime. I thought I'd never see a soprano as Natasha in Prokofiev's War and Peace equal to Yelena Prokina, Valery Gergiev’s choice for Graham Vick’s 1991 production.

Laurence Crane: 6 Trios, 2 Solos and 1 Quintet The Ives Ensemble (RTF Classical)

Prokofiev: Piano Sonatas 2, 6 and 8 Alexander Melnikov (Harmonia Mundi)

Yuri Temirkanov chose a shamelessly populist programme for the London leg of the St Petersburg Philharmonic tour. But Khachaturian, Prokofiev and Shostakovich are core repertoire for this orchestra, and ideal for showing off its many strengths.

Prokofiev: Romeo and Juliet (Complete) Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra / Vasily Petrenko (Lawo Classics)

Thomas Søndergård stood in for this concert at a day’s notice – Valery Gergiev is apparently recovering from a knee operation and unable to travel. He left behind a curious programme, centred around Prokofiev’s quirky but dour Sixth Symphony. It’s a difficult work to schedule, but Gergiev added two sweeteners, Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet and First Piano Concerto. Søndergård clearly has the measure of all three works, and all came off well, making this concert, his first appearance with the London Symphony, an impressive debut.