Vladimir Jurowski began his latest season as Principal Conductor of the London Philharmonic with a typically bold and adventurous programme. At its core were the two Szymanowski violin concertos performed by Nicola Benedetti, and these were framed by Debussy’s Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune and Bartók’s The Miraculous Mandarin Suite. The two concertos are stylistically distinct, the First impressionistic, the Second folk-influenced, so the pairings were apt.

The raising of a temporary structure theatre in the middle of the “Jungle” refugee camp in Calais (pictured below) has brought the issue of arts in situations of crisis into sharp focus. This big brave act by two young Brits, opening a creative space to some of the most miserable and traumatised people in Europe, in some of the most squalid conditions and in sight of the English coast, has hit a nerve which we cannot ignore.

The year 1987 was a notable one in music history. In February, Burt Bacharach won the Grammy for best song with “That’s What Friends Are For”, and two months later Joss Stone was born in England. At the age of 17 Stone would be nominated for three Grammies of her own, and at 19 would become a winner. She remains a platinum-selling singer and songwriter at the top of her game.

And so it ends: Hagen drowns, Valhalla burns, and the ring returns to the Rhine, while somewhere beneath – Wagner’s dawn trumpets sounding faintly in the distance – the dwarf Alberich continues his lonely scheming. It would be hard to find a more apt conclusion to a week of power-grabbing and back-stabbing than Götterdämmerung, and harder still to see its climactic conflagration as anything other than horribly prophetic. But where politics wreak chaos, so art must console, and this Ring cycle is consolation at its absolute purest and most ecstatic.

For some of us, Siegfried is a perfect opera. Like L.627 it stubbornly observes the Aristotelian rules of space and time to cut a generous slice of life. There are almost no set-pieces to break the flow of one-on-one conversations, accusations, confessions, arguments. These encounters are inevitably stifled by a concert staging, where singers address themselves to us, never to each other. Peter Mumford’s video projections set the scene with trees and glowing embers like a piece of slow TV on YouTube or BBC4.

Enter the human - and superhuman demands for at least four of the singers - in the second, towering instalment of Wagner's Ring cycle. It says so much for Opera North's achievement so far that no one fell in any way short of the sometimes insane vocal demands. There were only varying degrees of characterisation and commitment, none of them less than fine.

The Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment is 30 years old, and last night it celebrated in style. The orchestra has a long association with the music of Weber, who became iconic of their pioneering work in presenting 19th-century repertoire on period instruments. His greatest work received an impressive performance last night, one that demonstrated the many virtues of their unique approach to the work of the Romantics. But it wasn’t all a success, and was let down by a surprisingly modest staging concept from the usually ambitious David Pountney.

“Choleric humour, pathos and kindliness are mingled in conflict," wrote Robert Simpson of Nielsen’s 1928 Clarinet Concerto. The work was written for a player with a complex character, full of contradictions. Last night’s soloist, Mark van de Wiel, the Philharmonia's principal clarinettist, gave a fluent performance of the work convincing on its own terms, portraying the protagonist as an introvert and anti-hero.

Looking past the ballets for Diaghilev, there are still many superb scores by Stravinsky honoured more in scholarship than performance. In Myths and Rituals, the Philharmonia addresses that lack of wider appreciation with five concerts from May to September. The series got off to a promising start last night with the tiny fanfare for three trumpets – Monteverdi with attitude and wrong notes – from 1955, which was one of Stravinsky’s first thoughts for his last ballet, Agon.

Every year is Shakespeare year in theatre, opera house and concert hall. An anniversary's best, though, for those select few galas where the mind's made flexible by constant comparison between different Shakespearean worlds. I don't know how it was at Stratford last night – BBC Two will provide opportunity enough to catch up – but things could hardly have been more impressive on the Southbank, where Vladimir Jurowski and his London Philharmonic Orchestra reminded us what a gamut they've run both at Glyndebourne and at the Royal Festival Hall.