All five finalists in the Leeds International Piano Competition, at which Pavel Kolesnikov was one of the jurors, should have been given tickets, transport and accommodation to hear his Wigmore recital the evening after the prizegiving. Not that supreme imagination can be taught, but to witness the degree of physical ease (and freeflowing concert wear) that allows all the miracles to happen would be a good lesson to so many tension-racked pianists, including some of Kolesnikov’s peers.

How do you make a two-part final featuring five piano concertos work as a couple of totally satisfying programmes? First, give a wide list of concerto options, ask each pianist for two choices, settle on what will make the best contrasts – and then engage the brilliant Domingo Hindoyan and the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra of which he has been chief conductor since 2021 as partners

“Mozart, made in Manchester”, the project to perform and record an edition of the piano concertos plus all the opera overtures, seemed a distant destination and an unlikely marathon when Manchester Camerata embarked on it eight years ago.

The high level of entries for this year’s Leeds Piano Competition – 366, almost twice the number who entered in 2018 – is just one reminder that any young pianist wanting to make their name today is negotiating shark-infested waters. Technical excellence is a given – if you want to make a living, you need to have something extra to win the support of concert halls and critics.

A little piece of musical history was made last night at Manchester Chamber Concerts Society’s season-opening concert. Two of the greatest pianists of their generation, who met at the Royal Northern College of Music, celebrated the 50^th anniversary of their first collaboration there. 

It takes stiff competition to outshine Yuja Wang, who last night at the Barbican complemented her spangled silver sheath with a disconcerting pair of shades. But the super-heroine pianist, who played Rachmaninov’s First Piano Concerto, turned out to contribute the (comparatively) restrained and low-key element of a London Symphony Orchestra programme that culminated in a wall-shaking performance of Saint-Saëns’ "Organ" Symphony, with Anna Lapwood at the manuals.

A happy, lucid and bright pianist, a forbidding Everest among piano sonatas: would Boris Giltburg follow a bewitching, ceaselessly engaging first half by rising to the challenge of Beethoven’s “Hammerklavier” - a title he suggests, in his series of first-rate online essays about the sonatas, might be replaced more appropriately with “Titanic”?

You don’t need me to tell you that this particular law enforcer has served up yet another meaty helping of genius. It’s what we expect. So here she is, over-delivering again on her 12^th album. A salve for the soul, Joan Wasser’s delicious voice and masterful songwriting are woefully underexposed and appreciated. But, actually, that’s not a bad thing – let’s keep her secret for now.

Contrary to popular belief, not all music journalists get off on being snide about the same old easy-to-slate bands. When something like this album arrives in my review schedule, my instinct is to seek the good, to stick two fingers up to my sneering peers. Unfortunately Snow Patrol’s new album is proving a challenge. I am struggling to find the positives.

Ryuichi Sakamoto can be heard here, on Opus, surrounded by silence, shuffling at the keyboard, off-mic rustles and tells, recorded in the last year of his life, in September 2022 – he died early in the following year – as he sat to make his final performances.