Anyone who has followed the trajectory of choreographer-director Michael Keegan-Dolan and his West Kerry-based company Teaċ Daṁsa (House of Dance) will know by now to expect the unexpected. Such as a Swan Lake whose storyline, in part a searing attack on the abuses of the Catholic church, bore so little resemblance to the original that you might think you’d come to the wrong theatre until the spectacular finale seen through a blizzard of white feathers.

Thomas Adès, Oliver Leith, William Marsey: Shanty, Aquifer et al Hallé Orchestra/Thomas Adès (Hallé)

Every now and then a concert programme comes along that fits like a bespoke suit, and this one could have been specially designed for me. Two established favourites from big names of the 20^th century plus a new-to-me piece by a forgotten figure worthy of re-discovery.

Reynaldo Hahn: Piano Quartet, Piano Quintet, Songs Karim Sulayman (tenor), Kaleidoscope Chamber Collective (Chandos)

Out of innumerable Rite of Springs in half a century of concert-going, I’ll stick my neck out and say this was the most ferocious in execution, the richest in sound. Others may have wanted a faster, lighter Rite. But the two things that make every concert conducted by Klaus Mäkelä so extraordinary are that he inhabits the music to a visibly high level, and that he gets the fullest tone and urgent phrasing from every instrument.

Every lover of folk-tales knows that the seeker has to endure dangers and setbacks before they finally win the prize. Last night, the ever-enterprising Aurora Orchestra played The Firebird – Stravinsky’s own musical vision of the intrepid hero who outwits the forces of darkness – on a unique site that presents an audience with its own kind of ordeals. Once the Tottenham IKEA, Drumsheds has undergone a metamorphosis from super-store to super-club.

Two splendid pieces of orchestral virtuosity began and finished the second Saturday concert by the BBC Philharmonic under John Storgårds at the Bridgewater Hall. It was given the title of “Mischief and Magic”, an apt summary.

For mischief we had Richard Strauss’s Till Eulenspiegel’s Merry Pranks, perhaps the most perfect of his orchestral tone poems in that it not only tells a story but is beautifully shaped and balanced as an extended classical rondo.

Immersive opera such as this can be tricky to pull off, but the magic of Roxana Haines’s new production of Stravinsky’s Oedipus Rex lies in its simplicity, letting the material organically weave around the audience without overcomplications or deliberately clever trickery.

At first glance, this looked like an odd coupling: Stravinsky’s Violin Concerto from 1931, all spiky neo-classicism and short-winded expressionist sparkle, as a tributary opening before the mighty rolling stream of Bruckner’s Seventh Symphony.

William Steinberg: Complete Command Classics Recordings (DG)