Thomas Adès: Orchestral Suites London Philharmonic Orchestra/Thomas Adès (LPO)

Brahms: Piano Concertos 1 and 2, Solo piano works Igor Levit (piano), Wiener Philharmoniker/Christian Thielemann (Sony)

Hauntings, memories, echoes: Antonio Pappano has started his official tenure as chief conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra by looking back in time. Wednesday’s season opener gave us a MacMillan premiere “haunted by earlier musical spirits and memories”. Last night’s follow-up picked up the thread with the Elgar Violin Concerto – a work alive with stirrings and rustlings just out of sight, recollections that drift in and out of view, a human soul “enshrined” in its strange, otherworldly musings.

How do you get five thousand plus people into the Albert Hall to hear two Sanskrit-based rarities by British-born composers? Simple: place the Elgar Cello Concerto in between them. Here was another daring Prom programme that totally worked, not least since cellist Senja Rummukainen, compatriot of the BBC Symphony Orchestra much-loved Finnish chief conductor Sakari Oramo, proved as sensitive as him and his players to the elusive core of what's surprisingly become a popular classic.

What is Englishness? Over the last century the answer has changed substantially. Yet last night’s Prom, which – according to the programme – set itself the task of celebrating “all things English” had a very particular answer.

It’s probably a bit early to be getting misty-eyed about the approaching end of Sir Mark Elder’s time as music director of the Hallé, but the programme he and they have just finished touring in the North of England will have been, for many, his real farewell.

Its last outing was at the Bridgewater Hall yesterday, and it was (characteristically) a blend of the much-loved and familiar and something adventurous and new.

For the second big concert of his “residency” with the Hallé this season, Thomas Adès chose one major piece of his own, rather than a set of shorter ones. Tevot, a 21-minute one-movement work written for the Berlin Philharmonic 18 years ago, requires a huge assembly of performers, so it was probably too good a chance to miss once having taken the decision to do Tippett’s Triple Concerto, which is pretty lavish in that regard, too.

The second act of a trilogy, launched with “Renaissance” (2022), Beyoncé’s latest release has been loudly proclaimed as her “Country” album. In a tradition of surprising and controversial self-reinventions that includes among others Bob Dylan’s gospel albums and Ray Charles’s “Modern Sounds in Country and Western” (1962), the superstar has once again broken the rules of genre, and done her own all-too-remarkable thing – with the usual brilliance and panache.

Double bills at the ballet don’t often come as neatly gift-wrapped. Each of the works in question was made just before or during lockdown, arriving at its premiere by the skin of its teeth. Each went on to win a Critics’ Circle National Dance Award for best choreography.

Ben Gernon’s relationship with the BBC Philharmonic has been a richly rewarding one over the close-on seven years since his appointment as their principal guest conductor began, and indeed subsequently. 

The impression gained on his first Bridgewater Hall concert with them back in 2017 – that one of his instincts is to give an orchestra what it needs and then let the players do what they do best – was again clear in this programme of popular repertoire works which he took over from an indisposed Mark Wigglesworth.