A peninsular spirit of place and the greatest of instrumentalists drew me a second time to the eastern nook (hence the “Neuk”) of Fife. But could a second report for theartsdesk be justified – wasn’t the premise the same for the 11th East Neuk Festival as it had been at the 10th? Not quite.

Bach to Moog: A Realisation for Electronics and Orchestra Craig Leon (Moog synthesizers and conductor), Jennifer Pike (violin), Sinfonietta Cracovia (Sony)

Dresden is slowly opening up to the world. All but destroyed by British bombing in the Second World War, locked away inside Communist East Germany for 40 years, it is now becoming a tourist honeypot. On a warm day in May, you can see the snap-happy groups of Japanese and Germans trailing behind their guides, marvelling at the imposing Baroque buildings in the Old Town. You see them queuing patiently for the extraordinary museums and poring over the the restaurant menus in the city’s huge squares. One of the local specialities is potato soup, but then nothing’s perfect.

Sing, dance, breathe: those are the three imperatives for successful Bach performance, and three superlative interpretations at the Thuringia Bach Festival glorified them in excelsis. Frankly, I would have thrilled even to a merely good performance of the B minor Mass given its location in Eisenach’s Georgenkirche, which is to Bach lovers what Bethlehem is to Christians (not that many folk can't be both; and besides, can there really be blasphemy when it comes to the ultimate genius among composers, human as he undeniably was?).

After a Messiah last Christmas by one of London’s finest professional chamber choirs that was straight off the factory production line – mindlessly and maddeningly correct, just, I suspect, as it had been the five other times they performed it that week – I vowed to do things a little differently this Easter. Bach’s Passions certainly need skill and musicianship, but what they need above all is sincerity and heart.

The Australian musician and musicologist Martin Jarvis, connected with Charles Darwin University in the Northern Territory, has been obsessed for the past 25 years with proving that Anna Magdalena Wilcke, Johann Sebastian Bach’s second wife, was not only muse, inspiration, and copyist but a composer of pieces that now bear her husband’s name. He claimed that she created the cello suites which are among the masterpieces of 18th-century music, among other contributions, including, perhaps, the tune that is the basis for Bach’s Goldberg Variations. 

A memorial concert to a busy man. Alexander Ivashkin, who died last January, was a cellist, a scholar, a teacher, an authority on Russian music, and much else besides. This evening’s concert faced up to the daunting challenge of commemorating the many diverse aspects of Ivashkin’s career. The results were predictably wide-ranging, yet always coherent, and an impressive focus was brought to this mixed but never eclectic programme.

While the embers of the concert year are dying out around the country, you can be sure of a great blaze-up at St John’s Smith Square. The annual Christmas Festival of quality early-music groups and top choirs – this is the 29th – now traditionally culminates in two great works for chorus and orchestra. Over the past three years I’ve reeled at the best of Messiahs, four cantatas out of the six making up Bach’s Christmas Oratorio – and now that God of music’s ultimate demonstration of his omnipotent range.

In one way, it makes sense to give your London comeback concert in the venue where you made your European debut 44 years ago. Yet the Royal Festival Hall is a mighty big place for a violin-and-piano recital. Kyung Wha Chung had no problem nearly filling it last night with an audience including whole Korean families, but might have wished she hadn’t in the ailment-ridden dead of winter; her look could have killed a coughing child ("go and get a glass of water" is what I think I heard her say, from my very distant seat).