Tetzlaff, Wigmore Hall

Bach without attitude but with bags of personality from this magnificent violinist

When you hear Christian Tetzlaff play you hear Brahms, or Beethoven or, in this case, Bach. What you don’t hear a lot of is Tetzlaff himself. I mean that in the best possible way – so willing is the violinist to submerge himself, to set aside ego and agenda. It’s an approach that is at its purest in Bach’s solo violin music, and as he presented the sonatas and partitas to a full Wigmore Hall last night the generosity of this extraordinary musician allowed his audience to set ourselves aside for a moment too as we listened.

BBC Proms: Cameron Carpenter/ Znaider, Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, Chailly

BBC PROMS: CAMERON CARPENTER/ZNAIDER, LEIPZIG GEWANDHAUS ORCHESTRA, CHAILLY Mendelssohn masterclass from Chailly and a Bach car crash from Carpenter

Mendelssohn masterclass from Chailly and a Bach car crash from Carpenter

I'd love to see the stats on the last time a Prom was this packed for an afternoon organ recital. Were it not for the fact that organist Cameron Carpenter was sporting spandex trousers encrusted in silver glitter, a wife beater and Mohawk, you could have been mistaken for thinking we were back in the organ glory days of the early 19th century. Even the programme harked backward, offering as it did big, bloated Romantic transcriptions, arrangements and improvisations (pretty much everything in fact except the urtext).

BBC Proms: The English Concert and Choir, Bicket

BBC PROMS: THE ENGLISH CONCERT AND CHOIR, BICKET The Choir of the English Concert ensures this was no hair-shirted B Minor Mass

The Choir of the English Concert ensures this was no hair-shirted B Minor Mass

What better work for Harry Bicket and The English Concert to perform at the Proms than Bach's joyous Mass in B Minor. Joyous firstly because of the music itself, with its vast stylistic and emotional range. Joyous secondly because, despite the intense scholarship to which Bach and his music have been subjected over the years, its genesis remains unusually shrouded in mystery for such a major work.

The Arts Desk Radio Show 5

Peter Culshaw and Joe Muggs discuss the new Nigerian pop scene, Havana-Croydon dubstep and celebrate Astor Piazzolla

Peter has just come back from Lagos, so the first part of the show is a brief tour d’horizon of the dynamic Nigerian pop scene, featuring Asa, Tiwa Savage, 2Face, Flavour and D’Banj, the “Koko-Master”, who has just had his first UK Top 10 hit with “Oliver Twist”. Also discussed is the musical marriage and messy divorce between Don Jazzy and D’banj, who has signed to Kanye West's label world-wide, as well as the fact that Ye is rumoured to be an Illuminati. Is Nigerian pop about to go global? Quite possibly.

Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra, Koopman, Christ Church Spitalfields

AMSTERDAM BAROQUE ORCHESTRA: Drama both on and offstage in the opening concert of the Spitalfields Summer Festival

Drama both on and offstage in this opening concert of the Spitalfields Summer Festival

It’s one thing for UK Border Control to turn Heathrow’s Arrivals into a giant theme-park queue, but it’s quite another when they start messing with our music. Paperwork issues yesterday saw one Japanese and two Korean members of the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra denied entry to the UK, leaving Ton Koopman and his band too under-staffed to attempt their planned Brandenburg Concerto. Fortunately, soprano soloist Dorothee Mields stepped up with Bach’s Cantata BWV 199, giving us a rather more vocal, but no less Bach-centric evening of music to open this year’s Spitalfields Festival.

Maxim Vengerov, Itamar Golan, Wigmore Hall

MAXIM VENGEROV: The world's greatest violinist returns and reclaims his crown

The world's greatest violinist returns and reclaims his crown

Musicians can go one of two ways after a period of prolonged professional absence. The hiatus can either set them free (Horowitz) or screw them up (Pogorelich). In the case of Maxim Vengerov, we already knew that the latter hadn't happened. A successful early reappearance with the St Petersburg Philharmonic at the Royal Festival Hall a few weeks back - where he stepped in for an AWOL Martha Argerich - proved that.

Bach Cantatas: celeb seeks crowd-funding

One half of Armstrong and Miller wants 20 quid off you to help Sir John Eliot Gardiner

Fancy buying a new recording of Bach’s Cantatas? It’ll cost only slightly more than a regular CD. The only snag is it hasn’t been recorded yet, which is where you come in.