So how did you survive the 1980s? I don’t mean money-wise; I’m sure you had plenty of that. I mean musically and therefore spiritually. It was a diet of Thomas Mapfumo and old Nina Simone albums that got me through the first half, until the Red Cross parcel of Tom Waits’s Rain Dogs arrived in 1985. Who knows how many times that treasured piece of vinyl got lowered onto my 30-quid hi-fi in my desperate attempt to ward off the encroaching thunder of Phil Collins’s drum kit and myriad other musical abominations of the period?

Several of my favourite tracks of 2010 were on Tradi-Mods vs Rockers. This was a musically audacious project in which a bunch of Western pop and rock musicians dared to unpick the intricate fabric of some Congolese bands who were already making some definitively funky music of their own. The question that arose while I was reacquainting myself with this double CD yesterday, was how were these mostly cut'n'paste studio confections - made in the absence of the musicians that inspired them - going to be recreated live with the involvement of those very same musicians?

While we are far from lacking in top early music ensembles in the UK, there’s no denying that the French have a special affinity for this repertoire. While The Academy of Ancient Music and The Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment are virtuosic champions of the genre, if we were all stuck in a sinking hot air balloon I’d lose both before sacrificing Les Musiciens du Louvre, Les Talens Lyriques, Le Concert d'Astrée or Les Arts Florissants. So it was with anticipation that I made my way to the Barbican last night to hear the UK debut of Le Cercle de l’Harmonie, the newest French orchestra on the block.

There are few absolutes left in contemporary theatre. Fourth walls have long since crumbled underfoot; site-specific and immersive theatre experiences have further done away with divides between theatre and world, performer and audience. The one principle you can rely on is that consciousness is generally a good thing – that a play capable of putting you to sleep is bad. Oh, and that turning up to an opening night in your pyjamas is guaranteed to get you sent straight home again. Step forward maverick theatre company Duckie and their new show Lullaby, hoping to change all that.

The Barbican committed a grave sin last night. It forgot that people matter more than art. That their responsibility to the families of those who Jack Unterweger (the subject of John Malkovich's music drama, The Infernal Comedy) murdered trumps any interest in the dramatic potential of Unterweger's bizarre life. However constraining to the autonomy of creativity this may be, these are the rules of common decency. A portrait of Ratko Mladić that did little to show the horror of his crimes and much to convey what a loveable rogue he was would be a disgrace.

Sir John Tusa, chairman of theartsdesk, former managing director of the BBC World Service and Barbican Centre, has been made an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Academy today. Two non-artists a year are chosen by the Royal Academy of Arts in Piccadilly to honour for their distinction in their field. The other honoree is Joseph Rykwert, the art and architecture historian currently professor at the University of Pennsylvania.

It was Groundhog Day. Murray Perahia, due to play the Schumann Piano Concerto last night under Bernard Haitink, was indisposed and at the last minute Maria João Pires rushed in with Mozart 27. Just the same happened in 2006, strangely enough, with exactly the same three artists and orchestra. As you ponder that for a coincidence, what this shows is the powerful bonds that exist between musicians, between Haitink and these two pianists, whose virtues have much in common: impeccable lucidity and light-filled emotion.

Mozart's Idomeneo is subjected to a famous bit of abuse in Milos Forman's Amadeus. "A most tiresome piece," a courtier critic sniffs. "Too much spice. Too many notes." As it happens, not a wholly inaccurate statement. The work is quite an exotic curry of an early Classical opera.

The first night of this weekend residency by the renowned bassist, composer and band-leader Charlie Haden celebrated the 25th anniversary of Quartet West and their new Emarcy release, Sophisticated Ladies. A winning mix of tender balladeering and coruscating instrumentals, the quartet's music-making – rather like the finest wines – seems to improve and deepen with age. While all groups are capable of whipping up a barnstorming fortissimo, it's only the great ones that operate as well at the other end of the scale. And the Quartet West pianissimo is nonpareil.