“Improvisation? That?” whispered a Japanese lady to her friend at the end of the afternoon concert. She was making a good point. Half the performers in this programmed jam were glued to their scores. It was the low point of a mixed day at the Barbican Centre that began with a very enticing premise of offering to immerse us in the “Sounds from Japan”. We barely dipped our toe. The problem wasn’t simply the variability of the music; it was also the laziness of the curatorial thinking.

Flesh-tearing, woman-raping, body-goring brute he may be, but he's misunderstood, that Minotaur. It's a bold argument to make, but this is the contention of Harrison Birtwistle and David Harsent's 2008 opera. They are aided by a surprisingly cuddly performance from John Tomlinson.

Arditti String Quartet, Wigmore Hall, 31 October ****

November is always a good month for new music. This year saw the interest begin a day earlier. Whichever wag chose to hand over Halloween at the Wigmore Hall to two of the most uncompromising contemporary string quartets, however, was denied a fitting punchline. The young JACK Quartet were grounded in New York by Sandy, and the venerable Ardittis chose to programme works that weren't half as terrifying as hoped.

At the heart of Julian Philips’ chamber opera The Yellow Sofa stands, perhaps unsurprisingly, a beautiful antique yellow chaise longue that bears witness to all the adultery, money grabbing and revenge that a 1880s Lisbon household has to offer; but Philips’ sofa is far from mute, she is portrayed here by the exceptional Lauren Easton who sings an extraordinary mix of opera and fado as she narrates, in a sultry yet haughty fashion, all the steamy goings on.

A new Liam Scarlett ballet has become an event, even as, in this case, Scarlett’s home company, the Royal Ballet, is recreating a work he choreographed last January for Miami City Ballet – the young choreographer’s first international commission.

Albert Herring probably doesn’t make the top five most performed of Britten’s operas, yet is easily the best known work in English Touring Opera’s brave Autumn season – the other two are Viktor Ullmann’s The Emperor of Atlantis and Peter Maxwell Davies’ The Lighthouse.

There's no guaranteed route to success with contemporary opera but, ever since Nixon in China, topicality and realism have become the most favoured and trusted paths to some kind of favourable outcome. Two chamber operas, receiving their English premiere at the Linbury Studio Theatre on the weekend, joined this ever-expanding modern school of verismo. 

Sir Peter Maxwell Davies’ Ninth Symphony, completed in 2012 and heard in London for the first time in this concert, is dedicated to the Queen on her Diamond Jubilee. Those are not words to strike eager anticipation into my heart , though I’m happy to say that being Master of the Queen’s Music doesn’t appear to have dulled the composer’s powers in the way the equivalent title seems to nobble poets. Indeed, the dedication is merely that, and the work is no winsome tribute.

It is a rare treat for Londoners to have the CBSO with Andris Nelsons in town, and the Albert Hall was, if not fully sold out, then certainly well stocked. It would be fair to assume that the main draw was Shostakovich’s giant and much-debated Leningrad symphony after the interval; but first up was Glinka’s Ruslan and Lyudmila overture and the UK premiere of Emily Howard’s Calculus of the Nervous System.

And so we came to the Ninth. But wasn't it meant to be the only work on the programme? Why then was I hearing Boulez? A mishap: the final movement saw the quartet of soloists fall apart so comprehensively that, momentarily, it began to sound like they'd slipped into some unscheduled Modernism. We should be so lucky. No, we were still with this strangely anti-Olympian climax to the Beethoven cycle, where faster, higher, stronger had become slower, messier, more slug-like in Barenboim's hands.