What a slap in the face for the human predicament that an opera which, for all its faultlines, should carve "love and courage will set you free" on every heart meets with barely a moment of truth in Jürgen Flimm's production. It's the second Covent Garden revival in a month to give no sense of people or place, and like the McVicar Aida, it should have been put quietly to sleep after its first run. "But Nina Stemme will be wonderful," they all said. Don't bank on it; just be thankful that the soprano's Leonore and, perhaps more impressively, Endrik Wottrich as the imprisoned husband she saves are up to the vocal challenges.

What a slap in the face for the human predicament that an opera which, for all its faultlines, should carve "love and courage will set you free" on every heart meets with barely a moment of truth in Jürgen Flimm's production. It's the second Covent Garden revival in a month to give no sense of people or place, and like the McVicar Aida, it should have been put quietly to sleep after its first run. "But Nina Stemme will be wonderful," they all said. Don't bank on it; just be thankful that the soprano's Leonore and, perhaps more impressively, Endrik Wottrich as the imprisoned husband she saves are up to the vocal challenges.

Sir Colin Davis's year has not been a happy one. There've been heart problems, cancellations and, during a performance of The Magic Flute at Covent Garden last month, a major fall. Last night at the Barbican Hall he faced a strenuous Beethoven programme, the Third Piano Concerto with Jonathan Biss and the Seventh Symphony, and a new work by Romanian Vlad Maistorovici. Would the 83-year old conductor have enough energy to inject proceedings with the required welly?

There was as much welly as you could wish for. Understandably, he had assigned the mastery of Maistorovici's Halo to an undertsudy, Clemens Schuldt. It's not a particularly complicated piece but still no doubt benefited from the undivided attention of this young man. Its ebb and flow, most of which takes place in brass, woodwind and percussion, undergirded by a regular arpeggiated beat on strings that both harries and rocks, was reminiscent of Sibelius. A brief languid passage gives way to a faster, more colourful one that brings in snatches of Bartók and Stravinsky but that ultimately fails to shake off the rather suffocating beat, which rang on in the head after the work ended.

This was broken by the two lightning flash runs that announced the arrival of Beethoven's Third Piano Concerto and pianist Jonathan Biss at the keyboard in terrifically dramatic mode. It cut through a sluggish tempo that Sir Colin seems to have opted for for the opening orchestral statements. Biss took control of the reins and appeared to re-invigorate Davis who tarried with a much more suitably moody response. Biss's was the account of a true troubled traveller, full of changes of character - now the shouter, now the singer, now the imp - subsumed into one coherent and compelling voice.

The Largo saw some excellent pedalling that bled colours but never swamped them and the lolling head of the piano was perfectly put to sleep and then roused to action. Just as well. There are strange apparitions to be encountered in the mostly jaunty Allegro con brio and both Davis and Biss relished the arrival of every single one.

But how would Davis cope with that ultimate young man's work, the dashing romp that is the Seventh? With all the consummate ease and power of one of the world's great Beethoven interpreters. There was none of the colouristic reinvention of the Dudamel performance with the LA Philharmonic last month. But there was also no cutting of corners. Most importantly, and happily, there were very few signs of the tiredness that Davis seems to have been suffering from recently. This was a spirited performance, full of spring, brio and no small amount of fury. Speeds were fast but consistent. Woodwind were always able to graze quite happily in their fragrant clearings.

His attention was to the broad, natural sweep of the symphony rather than the many fine inner voices, the petticoats that can be admired and fiddled with till the cows come home. In this way, the melodic thread, which sometimes gets lost in lesser hands, was carried through every part, from the Verdi-like whirlwind of a dance in the Scherzo to the sinking double basses and singing horns of the finale. A masterclass in the art of conducting Beethoven had unfolded before us.

In the later 19th century, violinist and composer Joseph Joachim was hailed as the most brilliant fiddler of his day, but today his name lives on via the great works that he helped to bring into the classical repertoire. Brahms dedicated his Violin Concerto to Joachim, while Bruch's First Violin Concerto was substantially revised by Joachim and became closely identified with him. Both the Schumann and Dvořák concertos were written for him, though Joachim never performed the latter.

This is the second Sunday in a month that I've sat in the Wigmore Hall and been plunged into an evening of ferocious concentration from the very first bars. Mid-January saw violinist Leonidas Kavakos and his phenomenal pianist Enrico Pace carving out the grim memorial that is Prokofiev's First Violin Sonata, ultimately softened by radiant Schubert. Last night Kavakos's peer Thomas Zehetmair accented the lead in late Beethoven, and since only Shostakovich's last quartet followed, this time there was to be no more human gilding of a very alien lily.

Believe it or not, some critics can't get enough of London's superabundant concert scene. I could hardly be sour about not catching Gustavo Dudamel's first Barbican concert on Thursday night, spellbound as I was by his predecessor at the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Esa-Pekka Salonen, spinning such insidiously beautiful Bartók with the Philharmonia over on the South Bank.

There had been murmurings that his star had dimmed. That Gustavo Dudamel's partnership with the Los Angeles Philharmonic (greeted with such fanfare in 2009) had yet to set the West Coast on fire. Had this Icarus flown too high? Would their debut visit to the Barbican last night resemble Breughel's fall, Latino legs flailing in an orchestral sea? Not a bit of it.

Most of us don't object to experiments in concert presentation - the occasional one-off showcase to lure the young and suspicious into the arcane world of attentive concert-going, the odd multimedia event as icing on the cake. It's only those pundits obsessed with the key word "accessibility" who tell us that the basic concept of sitting (or standing, as they have at the Proms for well over a century) and listening with respect for those around us needs overhauling. It's a typical journalistic conception of "either/or" instead of "all approaches welcome" - a case of what an American academic I know calls "bad binaries".

If you've just come back from a taxing, tiring orchestral tour, as has the London Philharmonic, the last thing you want to face is a programme of four tough works which demand, at the very least, bright-eyed vigilance but more often a tense, finger-wrecking articulation. So the players must have been relieved to find firm hands on the wheel in the shape of the electrifyingly assured Finnish master Jukka-Pekka Saraste and that most intelligent, repertoire-curious of solo violinists, Frank Peter Zimmermann.