A music broadcaster commented after last night’s concert by the Australian Chamber Orchestra that all the hype, all the talk about the surf-obsessed, free-spirited leader Richard Tognetti, had left her half expecting them to surf onto the stage of the Queen Elizabeth Hall. As they walked on however (decorously, and rather more smartly dressed than most English groups) we were reminded that there’s nothing gimmicky about this ensemble.

Praise be, or slava if you prefer, to Valery Gergiev for honouring new Russian music alongside his hallmark interpretations - ever evolving or dangerously volatile according to taste – of Prokofiev, Shostakovich and Stravinsky. Last LSO season featured some of the less than inspired recent works Rodion Shchedrin has been dredging by the yard. Yet few would begrudge the palm of deep and original musical thought to this past week’s heroine, Sofia Gubaidulina.

It’s almost dark. Frescoes depicting the cycle of life are barely visible. They could be shadows. Waves of sound pulse through the mausoleum of Norwegian artist Emanuel Vigeland. Fiddle player Nils Økland is feeding the 15-second delay with peals that reverberate around the space, folding back into themselves. It’s a spooky, unforgettable introduction to FolkeLarm, Oslo’s annual festival of Nordic folk music.

Niccolò Paganini was the most controversial classical musician who ever lived. Although widely acknowledged to be one of the most brilliant performers of his lifetime, he provoked wildly contradictory opinions amongst his contemporaries and was constantly denounced as a charlatan in league with the devil – a spell in gaol for a paternity suit gave rise to the myth that he had acquired his dazzling technique from a pact with the devil during his incarceration.

You can count on one thing at the Proms: that the sound, if not on this occasion the cut-off point, of the extraterrestrial, wordless ladies’ choir at the end of Holst’s The Planets will scatter stardust through the Albert Hall solar system. Even, that is, if the performance is less than good, and last night’s was better than expected given reports of the same team’s near implosion in Beethoven’s Ninth. Hardly your average programme, either, with an unexpectedly lovely tone poem by featured composer Frank Bridge, and a surprisingly engaging float through the near vacuum of Sir Harrison Birtwistle’s almost new Violin Concerto.

You can count on one thing at the Proms: that the sound, if not on this occasion the cut-off point, of the extraterrestrial, wordless ladies’ choir at the end of Holst’s The Planets will scatter stardust through the Albert Hall solar system. Even, that is, if the performance is less than good, and last night’s was better than expected given reports of the same team’s near implosion in Beethoven’s Ninth. Hardly your average programme, either, with an unexpectedly lovely tone poem by featured composer Frank Bridge, and a surprisingly engaging float through the near vacuum of Sir Harrison Birtwistle’s almost new Violin Concerto.

Some violinists just play; others have a voice. Ukrainian-Israeli violinist Vadim Gluzman follows the distinguished line of great Petersburg violinist Leopold Auer - whose 1690 Stradivarius he currently plays - David Oistrakh and Isaac Stern, his one-time mentor.

Landscape painting may be dominated by the Dutch. But in music it is the Austrians who know best how to evoke the majesty of the great outdoors. In the first of last night's two Proms, one of the most awesome of Anton Bruckner's snow-capped symphonies, number five in B flat major, accompanied a new high climb through the Tyrol from fellow Austrian Thomas Larcher for two great musical off-pisters: violinist Viktoria Mullova and cellist Matthew Barley.

This year’s Choral Sundays at the Proms are a wonderfully mixed bag. Mighty choral touchstones are represented by Mendelssohn’s Elijah, both the Verdi and Mozart Requiems and Beethoven Missa solemnis, but there’s also an enticing strand of curiosities. Looming largest among these has of course been Brian’s Gothic Symphony, but emerging now from its sprawling shadow are less obscure but no less interesting works – Britten’s Spring Symphony, and last night Mahler’s folkloric Opus 1 cantata Das klagende lied.

They came in their thousands again last night, most – I’m guessing – for “the Elgar”. Lacking faith that Tasmin Little could fill the enormous soul of that most elusive of violin concertos – a prejudice, alas, fulfilled - I put my money on the polytonal jungle Percy Grainger grows from pastoral seeds at the heart of his wacky In a Nutshell Suite. Yet unforgettably though Sir Andrew Davis swept it along, even Grainger was overshadowed by the lone, late-night transcendentalism of folk singer June Tabor.