Tradition, in the form of Victorian performance, conferred on The Tempest the VC of Highest Shakespearean Poetry, though it probably wasn't Shakespeare's final play. John Gielgud was in an important sense the last great Victorian English thesp and, in the apparently valedictory role of Prospero, took the island parable to an Olympus of rhetoric. More recent Shakespearean poetics have led us to a drama riven with attacks on its own rhetorical afflatus and most contemporary stagings make Prospero, for a start, a bully. Cheek by Jowl's new version certainly does.

Last night Murray Perahia played Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, Schumann and Chopin, and we heard, quite simply, Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, Schumann and Chopin. Nothing more need be said, if one follows the Cordelia principle to love, and be silent.

A sliderule of 11-15 per cent reductions in annual grants by 2015, compared with this year, has been applied to Britain's major orchestras, opera, dance, theatre and music organisations. One major gainer is London's Barbican Centre - one major loser is the now world-famous Almeida Theatre, which loses almost 40 per cent of its current annual subsidy despite its reputation for innovation and discovery. However, the Arcola Theatre, another small innovative theatre, gets a big boost. Companies to lose all their grant from next year include Hammersmith's Riverside Studios and Derby Theatre.

Ariosto’s epic poem Orlando Furioso has yielded more than its fair share of operatic spin-offs. Inspiring three operas apiece from both Handel and Vivaldi, as well as works from Lully, Haydn, Caccini and Rameau, its vivid stories of love, magic and revenge were plundered freely by composers for the better part of two centuries. It’s a rich seam of works, and one the Barbican is celebrating with a triptych of concerts. We’ve already had an exceptional Alcina from Minkowski and Les Musiciens du Louvre, and Il Complesso Barocco will present Ariodante in May, but last night it was the turn of Jean-Christophe Spinosi and Ensemble Matheus with Vivaldi’s Orlando Furioso.

Heavy-goods vehicles stacked with lamentations have been thundering through the Barbican Hall. Saturday's lugubrious Rachmaninov found a mid-20th-century counterpart last night in the tough elegies of Shostakovich's First Violin Concerto - apt for a dedication to those affected by the Japanese earthquake. And the tottering juggernaut of not-quite-great-but-living Russian composer Rodion Shchedrin still clogs the LSO's current season, fortunately in this case only to head a procession ending in the carnival float of what should have been Tchaikovsky's springiest symphony.

I can still remember the excitement of pounding the pavements of SoHo in the early 1970s. Nowadays, this part of downtown Manhattan is awash with expensive restaurants, boutiques and smart galleries, but then it was a scruffy industrial area of warehouses and sweatshops. The factories were closing and the container trucks leaving, though, and artists were gradually infiltrating and turning the huge empty spaces into studios where they often lived illicitly.

What is it about Rachmaninov's ghost-train masterpiece The Bells and death? The BBC Symphony Orchestra last played it under the great Russian conductor Yevgeny Svetlanov, who used it as a valedictory gesture knowing he had only weeks to live. Yesterday Semyon Bychkov measured out the funeral knell of its harrowing finale with surely some thoughts of his brother and fellow conductor Yakov Kreizberg, who died on 15 March at the age of 51.

Sir Colin Davis's year has not been a happy one. There've been heart problems, cancellations and, during a performance of The Magic Flute at Covent Garden last month, a major fall. Last night at the Barbican Hall he faced a strenuous Beethoven programme, the Third Piano Concerto with Jonathan Biss and the Seventh Symphony, and a new work by Romanian Vlad Maistorovici. Would the 83-year old conductor have enough energy to inject proceedings with the required welly?

There was as much welly as you could wish for. Understandably, he had assigned the mastery of Maistorovici's Halo to an undertsudy, Clemens Schuldt. It's not a particularly complicated piece but still no doubt benefited from the undivided attention of this young man. Its ebb and flow, most of which takes place in brass, woodwind and percussion, undergirded by a regular arpeggiated beat on strings that both harries and rocks, was reminiscent of Sibelius. A brief languid passage gives way to a faster, more colourful one that brings in snatches of Bartók and Stravinsky but that ultimately fails to shake off the rather suffocating beat, which rang on in the head after the work ended.

This was broken by the two lightning flash runs that announced the arrival of Beethoven's Third Piano Concerto and pianist Jonathan Biss at the keyboard in terrifically dramatic mode. It cut through a sluggish tempo that Sir Colin seems to have opted for for the opening orchestral statements. Biss took control of the reins and appeared to re-invigorate Davis who tarried with a much more suitably moody response. Biss's was the account of a true troubled traveller, full of changes of character - now the shouter, now the singer, now the imp - subsumed into one coherent and compelling voice.

The Largo saw some excellent pedalling that bled colours but never swamped them and the lolling head of the piano was perfectly put to sleep and then roused to action. Just as well. There are strange apparitions to be encountered in the mostly jaunty Allegro con brio and both Davis and Biss relished the arrival of every single one.

But how would Davis cope with that ultimate young man's work, the dashing romp that is the Seventh? With all the consummate ease and power of one of the world's great Beethoven interpreters. There was none of the colouristic reinvention of the Dudamel performance with the LA Philharmonic last month. But there was also no cutting of corners. Most importantly, and happily, there were very few signs of the tiredness that Davis seems to have been suffering from recently. This was a spirited performance, full of spring, brio and no small amount of fury. Speeds were fast but consistent. Woodwind were always able to graze quite happily in their fragrant clearings.

His attention was to the broad, natural sweep of the symphony rather than the many fine inner voices, the petticoats that can be admired and fiddled with till the cows come home. In this way, the melodic thread, which sometimes gets lost in lesser hands, was carried through every part, from the Verdi-like whirlwind of a dance in the Scherzo to the sinking double basses and singing horns of the finale. A masterclass in the art of conducting Beethoven had unfolded before us.

Old joke: when is N’Dour not N’Dour? When he’s Frank Sinatra. The comparisons of the Chairman of the Board with Senegal’s biggest star may seem a bit far-fetched, but I wondered as I watched him whether there’s a current European or American star who has the sheer authority, laid-back charisma and utterly distinctive voice that Frank used to have and Youssou has. In Youssou’s case, his voice of warm honey and mahogany is one of the seven wonders of the world. As it happens, for the first few numbers, Youssou was also as lounge-musicy as I’ve ever seen him.

Sir Simon Rattle's intriguing return to the London Symphony Orchestra podium after years away threw up a curious thought: what happens after Berlin? The fate of six of his eight predecessors at the Berlin Phil has been death on the job. Was last night a first step to finding another way out?