The Borodin Quartet has been playing for over 70 years, and in the early days collaborated closely with Dmitri Shostakovich. None of the players from then are in the line-up now, of course, but the group has worked hard to maintain its distinctive identity and performance traditions, even as the players change. And they have a good claim to continuity: Valentin Berlinsky, the legendary cellist who was with the quartet almost from the start, was still playing with them up until 2007.

Every fan of his fiction knows that Haruki Murakami loves jazz and lets the music play throughout his books. Yet in this 320-page dialogue between the novelist and his equally eminent compatriot, conductor Seiji Ozawa, it’s the veteran maestro of the baton who makes the boldest lateral leap between their shared Japanese culture and the Western forms they admire.

It's harder for young professional musicians to be judged in standard repertoire – the very greatest music, in short – than to make their mark tackling the unknown in a wacky venue. High levels of energy and technical skill married to interpretations with something to say are what it takes, and what we got from the London Firebird Orchestra last night.

One of two Danish Thomases at the head of BBC bands (compatriot Thomas Søndergård is at the helm of the BBC National Orchestra of Wales), Thomas Dausgaard joins the Glasgow-based BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra as chief conductor this season.

The new season at the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic is focusing on revolutionaries. Bach, Beethoven and Berlioz all feature strongly over the next few months, as will Stravinsky and – where else but Liverpool? – The Beatles.

It’s just a short trip down the A1 from Edinburgh. But East Lothian – with its big skies, wide-open spaces, empty beaches and seemingly inexhaustable supply of quaint, historic villages – feels like a long, long way from the Scottish capital. Especially from the heaving, hectic Edinburgh of the August festivals season – which East Lothian’s Lammermuir Festival follows by just a couple of weeks, managing to maintain the momentum of artistic endeavour, but also providing a far more reflective, considered antidote.

Medieval to Modern – Jeremy Denk’s Wigmore Hall recital took us on a whistle-stop tour of Western music, beginning with Machaut in the mid-14th century and ending with Ligeti at the end of the 20th. The programme was made up of 25 short works, each by a different composer and arranged in broadly chronological order, resulting in a series of startling contrasts, but punctuated with equally surprising, and often very revealing, continuities.

You know what they say about men with big hands. Christian Thielemann has them, that’s for sure. Massive, meat-cleaving clappers, carving through the air. They give a pretty heavy upbeat too, and a generalissimo’s point and jab for a cue. If you’re a back-desk violinist in the Dresden Staatskapelle, you know when you’ve been Thielemanned.

The ingredients should be familiar by now. A plucky range of contestants drawn from across the geographic and social spectrum. A selection of interesting back stories. Demanding judges, their prickly edges softened by a fluffier presenter.

Beethoven: Symphonies 5-8 Copenhagen Philharmonic Orchestra/Lan Shui (Orchid)