July in Tuscany and the heat is intense. Oak-forested hills offer tempting shade; pale dust flies from the roads; in the houses curtains are drawn against the ferocious sun and around irrigated gardens the mosquitos are growing plump.

Anna Larsson's fellow Swedes can count themselves lucky that the worldwide first choice to sing Wagner's Erda and the midnight song in Mahler's Third Symphony has made so much of her Dalarna inheritance.

Emanuel Ax here celebrated his 70th birthday with an all-Schumann recital. In fact, it was an all-Schumann marathon, a three-hour concert at Wigmore Hall featuring solo works, Dichterliebe with Simon Keenlyside, and, with the Dover Quartet, the Piano Quartet and the Piano Quintet.

The whole raison d’être of the Longborough Festival was always the performance of its founder Martin Graham’s beloved Wagner.

Bartók: Complete String Quartets Quatuor Diotima (Näive)

Mozart: The String Quintets Klenke Quartet (with Harald Schoneweg, viola) (Accentus Music)

At Wigmore Hall the JACK Quartet presented the complete Elliott Carter string quartets in a single day – an astonishing feat given the scale and complexity of the music.

This was a fascinating, unexpected prospect; instantly appealing to anyone who’s ever wondered about the string quartet’s niche in the 21st-century musical ecosystem. Two practically new song cycles for soprano and quartet – Kate Whitley’s Charlotte Mew Songs (2017, but extended earlier this year) and Kate Soper’s Nadja (2015) - framed the Third Quartet (1938) by Elizabeth Maconchy.

There are those who say, somewhat cynically, that a way for new music to get an audience is to present it carefully packaged up with standard repertoire that will draw a larger crowd.

Vyacheslav Artyomov: In Memoriam, Lamentations, Pietà, Tristia I (Divine Art)