"Britten or Poulenc?" The question may seem a fatuous one, geared to the 100th anniversary of the Englishman's birth and 50 years since the Frenchman's death. Yet it certainly livens up what would otherwise be the usual dreary artists' biographies, presented with typical elan in this year's Cheltenham Music Festival programme book. "Has anyone said Poulenc in response to this?" asks pianist James Rhodes.

Schumann and his Daughters Florian Uhlig (piano) (Hänssler Classic)

The magic usually descends quickly in a Mitsuko Uchida recital but the opening Bach of this rescheduled Festival Hall concert - a pair of Preludes and Fugues from Book 2 of The Well-Tempered Klavier - took a while to draw attention from the farthest reaches of this unfriendly recital space.

In many ways the most well-tempered of conductors, Wolfgang Sawallisch (1923-2013) brought a peerless orchestral transparency and beauty of line to the great German classics. Even the most overloaded Richard Strauss scores under his watchful eye and ear could sound, as the composer once said his opera Elektra should, “like fairy music by Mendelssohn”.

Now the BBC Symphony Orchestra’s second Conductor Laureate, Jiří Bělohlávek was always going to deserve a hero’s welcome for taking his players to the finishing line of their six-year cycle through Mahler’s symphonies. As more superficially brilliant Mahler series like Gergiev’s, squeezed into a single anniversary season, seem a distant memory, many of Bělohlávek’s slow burn, deep vein interpretations live on in the mind and soul.

Sting, Debbie Harry, the Pet Shop Boys, Brahms, Mozart, Schumann. This is the kind of thing an average year throws up for the Gateshead-based Northern Sinfonia. Their visits to London are mostly to provide a backing track for the top pop acts. Which is not only perverse but verging on the criminal. Because, as so many have noticed before, the Northern Sinfonia aren't simply another middle-of-the-road band of freelancers, they may well be the finest chamber ensemble working in the country today.

Hans Gál: Symphony No 4, Schumann: Symphony No 2 Orchestra of the Swan/Kenneth Woods (Avie)

Just as the most impeccably aristocratic families have the shabbiest homes, so the oldest and most prestigious orchestras frequently deliver the most scrappy performances. Trying too hard is so arriviste. King of this insouciant shabby chic are the Vienna Philharmonic. It's almost as if at some point the orchestra got bored of playing well. One hundred and sixty years at the top delivering the world's warmest, plushest, most sophisticated sound must get repetitive. 

What an era for pianists it was in the four decades from 1800 to 1840, the era covered by Murray Perahia’s recital last night. Beethoven, Schumann, Schubert and Chopin all in full verdant flight, selected for a programme of much fantasy and dancing rhythms, in which the translucent, crystalline playing of the American found and told multiple stories.

You couldn't imagine a less likely acrobat than avuncular American Richard Goode. But when it comes to the piano, there's no mistaking it. A nippy little tumbler he undoubtedly is. Today we saw his fingers bounce about the keyboard like a troupe of prepubescent Romanian gymnasts. The sleepy Sunday concert that many had clearly hoped for was not going to be the narrative of this kinetic performance.