Brahms: The Piano Quartets The Primrose Piano Quartet (Meridian)

Stewart Goodyear: Callaloo, Piano Sonata; Gershwin: Rhapsody in Blue Stewart Goodyear (piano), Chineke! Orchestra/Wayne Marshall (Orchid Classics)

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.

With two German giants roaring - Brahms in leonine mode, Richard Strauss more with tongue in armour-plated cheek - it could have all been too much. Not in the eloquent hands of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra's Music Director Designate, Vasily Petrenko, or pianist Denis Kozhukhin, the most musically disciplined of Russians.

Percussionist Pedrito Martinez is one of those musicians who forces you to re-think what instruments are capable of – while making you wonder if there is actually anything he can’t do. He plays congas, batá drums and bongos with breathtaking facility and flow. He sings everything from Yoruba chants to “Quizás”. He dances. And he can turn a side drum and a hi-hat (no sticks, all played with hand/foot) plus cajon drum as if by magic into a rock drum kit.

You seldom hear a Champions League-level roar of approval at the Wigmore Hall. Last night, though, Igor Levit drew a throaty collective bark of appreciation from the audience after (for once) an awed hush had followed the final dying cadences of the aria’s return in Bach’s Goldberg Variations. Had he earned it? Absolutely. This recital was first of three devoted to the idea of Variations. Friday will see Levit play Beethoven’s Diabelli set, and Frederic Rzewski’s mighty deconstruction of the revolutionary anthem “The People United Will Never Be Defeated”.

Chilly Gonzales sits for so long at the piano, in his smoking jacket and slippers, before commencing his first song that I wonder if this is a John Cage moment. It’s a stark contrast to his energy at the end of the gig, where Chilly (real name, Jason Beck) is stamping both feet in marching motion, his whole body hunched and rocking, hair flicking as he pounds the low keys with virtuosic intensity.

Ed Sheeran, Tom Odell, all those Mr Vulnerability cats; this dude makes them sound like a night out with Slipknot. He is, in fact, a generational divider. Taking the contemporary route to success, wherein smirky, buddy-ish social media is just as important as the music – if not more important – Scottish singer-songwriter Lewis Capaldi’s sudden stadium-level success is bewildering to anyone over 25.

Expect no cliches about toreador pianism. Red-earth flamboyance is not Javier Perianes' style, and the seven dances he offered in his programme - eight including an encore - by fellow Spaniard Manuel de Falla were not the most consistently engaging part of the recital.

Brahms: The Cello Sonatas The Fischer Duo: Norman Fischer (cello), Jeanne Kierman (piano), with Abigail Fischer (mezzo-soprano) (Centaur Records)