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.

The Sunday Afternoon Song Recitals are a wonderful Wigmore tradition. Filling in that tricky gap between lengthy weekend lunch and early school-night supper, they offer a chunky one-act programme, generous but without the fuss and faff of an interval. Balancing young talent with more established performers, the next few months see (among others) Emma Bell, Anna Grevelius and Isabel Bayrakdarian occupying this slot. Playing to the prevailing mood yesterday afternoon was repertoire from Gounod, Britten’s Cabaret Songs and the UK premiere of Iain Bell’s song cycle Day Turned Into Night. Sitting less comfortably however were Poulenc’s Quatre poèmes de Guillaume Apollinaire which set proceedings off to a rather inscrutable start.

Mezzo-soprano Christine Rice is seen almost more often on the opera stage than the concert hall platform these days, working regularly for both the Royal Opera and ENO, most recently struggling against weak direction in Handel’s Radamisto. Her range and well-balanced tone make her a desirable soloist, but I still remain to be fully convinced by her acting skills.

These unfortunately were very much at issue in the Poulenc. Apollinaire’s poems are elusive; filled with fractured images and characters, they always seem to end prematurely, catching the listener unawares. Though game in her characterisation of the literal narratives – the gossipy backbiting of “L’Anguille”, the offhand vocal shrug of “Hôtel” – there was an absence where a coherent interpretation needed to be, a sustained tone or a musical gesture to make sense of these epics in miniature. Both she and accompanist Roger Vignoles however did bring demonstrable enjoyment to the set, with Vignoles’s delicate touch playfully highlighting the shift from furrowed-brow Neo-Classicism to music-hall vamping in “Avant le cinéma”.

More satisfying were Gounod’s 3 Mélodies, with their more solid Victorian sensibility. The long lines and caressing lyricism of “Au rossignol” showed Rice’s voice at its most finely spun, and gave us the first real encounter with the power that lies behind, released here to magnificent effect.

British composer Iain Bell’s song cycle Day Turned Into Night takes inspiration from the figure of Queen Victoria. Resolutely monochrome in the national imagination, Bell attempts to flesh out the caricatured black-clad figure with context, setting texts from the Queen’s correspondence leading up to her marriage and then following the death of her husband. It’s a novel idea, and one that gains weight from the surprisingly heartfelt writings. We start with the awkward formality of “My Dearest Uncle”, all truncated phrases and wilful rhythmic hesitations, strikingly at odds with the emotive account of the first meeting between Victoria and Albert. Emotions are allowed greater release in “The honeymoon night”, with its lingering repetitions in the accompaniment, before the mood darkens for the final three songs.

Bell’s harmonic language is unmistakably English, with the shadow of Britten falling over the subversive accompaniments and occasional glances toward bitonality. If there is nothing especially new here, then there is also much to enjoy; Bell’s understanding of vocal writing is evident, and Rice’s instrument a good fit for the cycle’s broad emotional arc.

Closing the afternoon were Britten’s Cabaret Songs, a series of virtuoso vocal feats masquerading as off-the-cuff musical musings and encore fodder. While technically secure, there were a number of interpretative quirks to the performance that didn’t quite ring true. The recitative-like sections in “Tell me the truth about love” for example, while encouraging expressive liberties also demand a certain metrical control if they are not to distort the work’s careful architecture. Pianist and singer parted company here (and later again in “Johnny”) and in each case I would be tempted to side with the more measured Vignoles (pictured above) than the runaway Rice. “Funeral Blues” can be a struggle for mezzos, sitting squarely on the lower break into chest voice. While the emotional tone, with its extrovert show of grief, was thrilling, the vocal mechanics were rather too much on show to allow listeners to surrender to the text.

I can think of few nicer ways to spend a Sunday afternoon than being given a leisurely tour through 19th and 20th-century European song by two such performers. While interpretatively I have my issues with Rice, there is no arguing with the glorious tone to her voice, especially the rounded power of its bottom register. Coupled with the elegant intelligence of Vignoles, the result is reliably delicious.

Not a lot of swooning goes on at the Wigmore Hall. Nor does it seem the kind of institution to endorse rapturous wailing, beating of the breast, or the throwing of either flowers or underwear. All of which leaves one with the problem of how to respond appropriately to a concert such as last night’s by Richard Egarr and countertenor Iestyn Davies. Decorous applause doesn’t quite seem to cut it when faced with such a joyous abundance of talent, and I’d have endured any amount of plague and/or restrictive corsetry for an authentic 18th-century atmosphere in which to experience this ecstatic evening of music.

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Perhaps it was the effect of the elaborately mosaicked and marbled stage of the Wigmore Hall, but when a black-clad Thomas Zehetmair stepped out last night to occupy this space with just his violin and Bach for company, the image was incongruous. Even devotees of the hall will surely acknowledge the fussiness of its aesthetic appeal, the lingering visual excesses of a bygone age making it as unlikely a setting for Zehetmair’s deconstructed style as for the sharp architectural edges of Bach’s Sonatas and Partitas for Solo Violin. Yet host them it did, and in a characteristically uncompromising performance, Zehetmair managed to bring his comfortably sat audience along with him into an altogether less warm and secure place.

The last time I saw Wolfgang Holzmair in concert (at last year’s Oxford Lieder Festival, delivering one of the finest live performances of Winterreise I have heard) the silence that followed the cycle lasted almost 30 seconds – an absolute age where a fidgety post-concert audience is concerned. Last night’s programme of Schumann saw Holzmair finish and pause, hands raised prayerfully, holding his listeners’ attention like so many butterflies within his cupped palms. The release that followed was ecstatic, a spontaneous homage to the musical and narrative mastery of this extraordinary singer.

In a world obsessed with the next big thing, I was surprised not to see a larger crowd at last night’s Samling Showcase. Since this masterclass programme for young professional singers started 14 years ago, alumni have included Jonathan Lemalu, Anna Grevelius, Christopher Maltman and Toby Spence – a roster that speaks for itself and for the finely honed ears at work within the organisation. Joined by patron and course director Sir Thomas Allen as well as pianist Malcolm Martineau, four of the current Samling Scholars took to the Wigmore stage last night to present themselves and a full programme of music to a curious public.

Who was a greater composer of words: Schubert or Purcell? A toss-up, I think, after a revelatory concert at the Wigmore Hall by Les Talens Lyriques with the French soprano Sandrine Piau on Saturday. The sheer quality of the poetry Purcell set in his Harmonia Sacra, collections of “divine hymns and dialogues”, is both profound and emotionally direct: “Lord, what is man?”, “In the black, dismal dungeon of despair”, “Music, for a while”...

Visits from the pick of Europe’s Baroque orchestras – Concerto Köln, Europa Galante, Le Concert d’Astree, Les Musiciens du Louvre – are a blissfully frequent occurrence in London, an alternative and supplement to our own ever-growing roster of period talent. A tour by a North American ensemble is, by contrast, something of a rarity, and I can’t have been alone last night in hearing the much-lauded Apollo's Fire (otherwise known as the Cleveland Baroque Orchestra) live for the first time. “Hearing”, however, rather fails to encompass the visually charged, minutely stage-managed musical theatrics on display from Jeannette Sorrell and her irrepressible team of musicians.

Perhaps I’m being too literal-minded, but demanding South American music from a concert programme advertised as “South American Baroque” doesn’t seem entirely unreasonable. When you add Colombian-born soprano Juanita Lascarro as soloist and Brazilian Rodolfo Richter as leader it seems actively desirable – a chance to encounter an underexposed seam of music in the hands of expert guides. Turns out that all musical roads lead back to Europe, to the ubiquitous Scarlattis, Handel and Hasse, and despite a few exotic excursions to the New World it was in the familiar Old that we spent the bulk of our evening.