In Leopold Mozart’s old house (now a museum) in the Bavarian city of Augsburg a piano tuner is hard at work tuning one of the working exhibits - a venerable clavichord. Enter Reinhard Goebel and Mirijam Contzen whose new Oehms Classics recording of the six Mozart violin concertos with the Bayerische Kammerphilharmonie is sure to stimulate lively debate and maybe even raise eyebrow or two in the coming months.

In the season of goodwill a new musical based on Bret Easton Ellis’ notorious novel American Psycho might earn itself the subtitle “NOT the Christmas Show” - but when the composer is Duncan Sheik, he of the sensational Spring Awakening, and the director Rupert Goold, fresh into his artistic stewardship of the Almeida Theatre, all bets are off. There’s even a number entitled “Mistletoe Alert” - so the season of rampant consumerism might well prove just the time to launch one of the most anticipated musicals of this or any season.

Bowing in at the London Coliseum for the latest revival of Anthony Minghella’s sumptuous staging of Puccini’s Madam Butterfly, conductor Gianluca Marcianò is fast building a reputation as one of the most thoughtful and stylistically incisive of thoroughbred Italians on the circuit.

In the listening room of Grieg Hall, Bergen, a concert hall sometimes masquerading as a theatre and vice versa, I talk to Mary Miller, director of Bergen National Opera, and Andrew Litton, music director of the venerable Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra - about the genesis of opera in Bergen and the prospect of the big autumn production - Beethoven’s cry for freedom and political tolerance, Fidelio - which will serve as an upbeat to the 200th anniversary of the establishment of Norway’s constitution in 2014.

Benjamin Wallfisch was born into an extraordinarily musical family. His father Raphael Wallfisch is a cellist of international repute and his grandmother Anita Lasker-Wallfisch would not be alive today had her cello not served as a refuge for her soul while she was an inmate at Auschwitz. Benjamin did not play the cello but instead graduated from piano to baton in pursuit and fulfillment of his musical passions.

Lucy Schaufer has always been one to confound our expectations. As she puts it herself, she’s “an American in London, conceived within the American Dream and living in the Old World.” As an indication of her boundless versatility she’s been seen here in roles as diverse as Claire DeLoone in Bernstein’s On the Town, Thea in Tippett’s The Knot Garden, and Jenny in Knussen’s Higglety Pigglety Pop! She made a huge impression at the Leicester Curve as Margaret in the UK premiere of Adam Guettel’s The Light in the Piazza.

It comes as no surprise that international tenor Ian Bostridge plays a significant part in EMI and Virgin Classics‘ contribution to Britten 100. In this exclusive audio podcast he discusses the man, the music, the insecurities, the contradictions, the isolation that came with being a pacifist in time of war and a homosexual in a time of illegality.

The evolution of the solo percussionist has advanced dramatically over the last couple of decades and among the superstars of the hardware that can be struck and pounded or caressed and stroked is the flying Scotsman Colin Currie, whose profile has steadily grown since becoming the first percussionist ever to reach the finals of the BBC Young Musician of the Year in 1994.

In 2007 the English tenor, Ian Storey, made a dramatic and highly visible debut as Tristan in Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde at the season opening of La Scala, Milan, conducted by Daniel Barenboim and directed by Patrice Chereau. It was seen by millions on TV, in cinemas, and on DVD and marked a big development in this singer’s career. This year he will be singing Siegfried in Götterdämmerung, again under Barenboim, as part of a complete bicentennial Ring cycle at the BBC Proms.

The 36th Dresden Music Festival has a big title and even bigger ambitions. Empire is a theme which Artistic Director Jan Vogler hopes will embrace not just the cultural achievements of the British Empire but the broader implications of the word. The Brits are coming for sure with a range of music stretching from the Renaissance via Purcell to Elgar and Britten. The Americans are coming, too, with the New York Philharmonic “in residence” under their Chief Conductor Alan Gilbert. And 2013’s big anniversaries - Wagner, Verdi, Lutosławski, Britten - will be celebrated in style.