I remember very well the first time I read Swann’s Way, the first part of Marcel Proust’s monumental masterpiece, In Search of Lost Time (À la recherche du temps perdu). I was struck not only by the depth and beauty of the novel, but also the crucial role that music played in the narrative.

Erik Chisholm: Violin Concerto, Dance Suite for orchestra and piano, From the True Edge of the Great World Matthew Driver (violin), Danny Driver (piano), BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra/Martyn Brabbins (Hyperion)

Nimrod Borenstein: Violin Concerto, The Big Bang and Creation of the Universe, If You Will It, It Is No Dream Oxford Philharmonic Orchestra/Vladimir Ashkenazy, with Irmina Trynkos (violin) (Chandos)

Every 21st birthday deserves a party, and the Bridgewater Hall in Manchester celebrated the anniversary of its opening with a weekend of fun and "access" events, ending with a recital by four pianists on its four Steinway pianos – playing them all at once, in eight-hand arrangements.

Dreams & Fancies – English music for solo guitar Sean Shibe (guitar) (Delphian)

The Paris-based Ensemble InterContemporain brought a wide-ranging programme to the Wigmore Hall.

A drama of passion for essentially passive characters, Debussy’s one and only completed opera is a masterpiece of paradox. How do you stage a work whose dramatis personae hardly seem aware of their own destructive feelings, and who inhabit their island world like the blind who, according to Pelléas, used to visit the curative fountain but stopped doing so when the king himself went blind?

Antheil: Symphonies 4 and 5, Over the Plains BBC Philharmonic/John Storgårds (Chandos)

François-Xavier Roth is a distinctive presence at the podium. He is short and immaculately attired, and first appearances could lead you to expect a civilised and uneventful evening. But the facade soon drops. His movements are brisk and erratic, as he conducts without a baton and instead shakes his outstretched hands at the players. He often leaps into the air, landing in a fierce pose directed at one of the players, before returning to his repertoire of small, indistinct gestures.

Who needs hallucinogenic drugs when we have Debussy's two books of Préludes? In the hands, that is, of a pianist magician who holds the key to this wild parade, demi-real wonderland, call it what you will. I've only heard two wizards equal to the whole sequence: on disc, Krystian Zimerman, graced by a wide recorded range the old masters could never command, and now, in the concert hall, Alexander Melnikov.