At first sight, Vaughan Williams’ Second and Seventh Symphonies might seem to have a lot in common. Both are quite programmatic and pictorial, the second (the London) including music that might have finished up as a tone poem, and the seventh (Sinfonia antartica) adapted from his score for the film Scott of the Antarctic (1948).

Eric Nathan: Missing Words (New Focus Recordings)

Continuing the joint BBC Philharmonic/Hallé celebration of Vaughan Williams, Sir Andrew Davis took on the job of presenting three substantial works on Saturday.

It’s catching on … for the second consecutive night I heard an orchestra begin by playing, to a standing audience, the Ukrainian national anthem. The previous night it was Opera North’s musicians: this time the Norwegian conductor Tabita Berglund addressed the audience at the Bridgewater Hall to explain that it would be dedicated to the victims of war in Ukraine, and the Hallé gave it a resounding reading, followed by loud applause.

There was something extraordinarily powerful and moving about Saturday’s Beethoven commemoration concert by the BBC Philharmonic and its chief conductor, Omer Meir Wellber.

There was no overt reference to the world outside in this concert, and yet the poignancy of its content could hardly have been clearer if it had been planned: two symphonies and a song cycle each touched by the tragedy of war.

Healing, ecstasy and transformation are the aims, from Johnny Marr’s Manchester counter-culture adolescence to this compendium of Covid-era EPs, released as he nears 60.

This is a story of an innocent who finds herself unexpectedly in a strange, unknown world. The same could be true for those in its audience.

Scottish academia sets great store by the significance of folk tradition, and many are the books and papers on every aspect of the subject. It’s this that forms the background to The Strange Undoing of Prudencia Hart – the study of balladry, in particular – and a little gentle spoofing of that academic oeuvre gives the show its kick-off point.

Manchester’s oldest chamber orchestra has been gathering a new audience at the Stoller Hall in Chetham’s School of Music since that auditorium opened, and Sunday afternoon’s programme provided an excellent example of where the Northern Chamber Orchestra’s virtues lie.

Sir Mark Elder and the Hallé were making something of a statement in this concert. Gone was the extended platform, gone the distanced orchestral seating of the past 18 months or so (strings now back to shared music stands), and the programme (also a live broadcast on Radio 3) was both adventurous and, one hopes, attractive, with a star soloist and a barn-storming finale.