Orchestre National de France, Gatti, Royal Albert Hall

A hit-and-miss Prom for Gatti's French band

It was one of those moments that every conductor (and orchestra) dreads: “The Procession of the Sage” from Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring is in rip-roaring full cry, percussion grinding and scratching, high trumpet screeching – but Daniele Gatti, it would seem, loses a bar somewhere and gives his Orchestre National de France a premature cut-off, leaving the entire brass section between a rock and a hard place. Stop or play on? An ignominious collapse ensues – as big a blunder as I’ve heard in any professional concert in years. Who says The Rite of Spring no longer has the capacity to shock?

Stravinsky, The Rake's Progress, Glyndebourne

We're still humming Hockney's sets but are the accents intrusive?

Thirty-five years on and this is still as much David Hockney’s Rake as it is Stravinsky’s or W H Auden’s. How rarely it is that what we see chimes so completely and utterly with what we hear. The limited palette of colours, the precisely etched cross-hatching, the directness and the cunningly conceived elements of parody – am I talking about Hockney or Stravinsky? Two great individualists in complete harmony. So why the disconnection?

London Sinfonietta, Atherton, BBC Singers, Royal Albert Hall

Stravinsky runs rings around Bach

The Tenebrae service of Maundy Thursday sees Satan's removal men take over holy duties. Crosses are veiled, lights are extinguished, songs of wailing erupt. Stravinsky's Threni (receiving its Proms debut last night) is a setting of these wails - the Lamentations of the Prophet Jeremiah - and is carved out of a dark, unforgiving orchestra and a suffocating choral weave. For the atheist, if not for those of a religious bent who might prefer the succour of François Couperin or Thomas Tallis's settings, there can be no better depiction of the asphyxiation of despair.
 

MacMillan premiere, Repin, LSO, Gergiev, Barbican Hall

Dazzling Vadim Repin proves James MacMillan's tumultuous Violin Concerto is here to stay

"There is not one idea," wrote that intemperate critic Eduard Hanslick about Richard Strauss's Till Eulenspiegel, "that does not get its neck broken by the speed with which the next lands on its head." Rather a compliment, I've always thought, and certainly so as applied to James MacMillan's new Violin Concerto. As soloist Vadim Repin and conductor Valery Gergiev whirled us tumultuously through its hyperactive songs and dances, there was so much I wanted to savour, to hear again. That won't be a problem.

BBCSO, Bĕlohlávek, Barbican Hall

Czech master conductor soars to new heights in a Martinů masterpiece

It needs saying yet again, until the message gets through: Bohuslav Martinů is one of the great symphonic masters of the 20th century, and his fellow Czech, chief conductor of the BBC Symphony Orchestra Jiři Bĕlohlávek, once more proves the right man to marshal a golden Martinů revival. It needs saying above all because, for all the beauties and oddities in every bar of the six symphonies, composed at the height of the exiled composer's mastery in America and France between 1942 and 1953, the Third Symphony is perhaps the one which cries out masterpiece from embattled start to shatteringly moving finish. I never thought I'd be writing this, but last night it even outshone by a long way two intriguing but problematic works by Stravinsky and Prokofiev.

London Symphony Orchestra, Adams, Barbican Hall

American composer conducts other people's music dazzlingly but metronomically

As in his first concert this season with the London Symphony Orchestra on Sunday, Adams the composer-conductor moved last night from the natural phenomena of an older master to his own illuminated chronicle of man-made unease. City Noir, his latest orchestral symphony in all but name, bears his trademark knit of rhythms both bludgeoning and capricious with sinuous melodic nocturnes: the mixture rather as before, but with a fresh twist of LA jazz. You'd think the marriage of harmony and invention would free up his conducting of other men's music. Oddly, though, that remained doggedly beat-bound, to be saved at the last minute by Jeremy Denk's astounding sense of fantasy in Stravinsky's Concerto for Piano and Wind.As in his first concert this season with the London Symphony Orchestra on Sunday, Adams the composer-conductor moved last night from the natural phenomena of an older master to his own illuminated chronicle of man-made unease. City Noir, his latest orchestral symphony in all but name, bears his trademark knit of rhythms both bludgeoning and capricious with sinuous melodic nocturnes: the mixture rather as before, but with a fresh twist of LA jazz. You'd think the marriage of harmony and invention would free up his conducting of other men's music. Oddly, though, that remained doggedly beat-bound, to be saved at the last minute by Jeremy Denk's astounding sense of fantasy in Stravinsky's Concerto for Piano and Wind.

BBC Symphony Orchestra, Marc Minkowski, Barbican

Smashing performance of Pergolesi's Stabat Mater in his anniversary year

It always repays to push a world-class orchestra beyond their comfort zone. The BBC Symphony's sound emerged from the refashioning hands of period specialist Marc Minkowski like a naked body from a cold shower: convulsively invigorated and invigorating all those that knocked into it. It was a joy to hear: the best, most intriguing period-playing I've heard for quite a while. For sure the orchestra were more comfortable in Stravinsky's Pulcinella, which went off like a spinning jenny, but the sounds Minkowski managed to elicit from the players in Pergolesi's Stabat Mater chilled the blood. More on all that later.

Vienna Philharmonic, Lorin Maazel, Barbican

The Rite of Spring and Bruckner's Third receive a wonderfully vulgar performance

Shuffling about the podium like a cha-cha-chaing Jack Lemmon, slam-dunking his first beats, kicking out his heels for second beats, épéeing the trombone entries like a toy toreador, it wasn't hard to see why Lorin Maazel gets such a regular critical roasting. During The Rite of Spring he was almost playing up the vulgarian tag. "You want vulgar? I'll give you vulgar. Take that ridiculously elongated glissando! And that totally out-of-place ritardando! And that gob-smackingly inappropriate sforzando!" That Maazel is a showman has never been in question. What is more problematic is discerning whether this actually mattered? Eyes away now if you're averse to a bit of heresy but might Stravinsky's Rite and Bruckner's Third actually not both benefit from a bit of vulgarity?
 

Richard Alston Dance Company, Sadler's Wells and touring

Workmanlike and well-crafted, but an abyss away from the e-word

Tim Henman - brilliant and unfairly treated, or... not? Even when John McEnroe passionately enumerates Henman’s qualities, do you both nod hopefully and realistically shake your head? Because, yes, our lad may be a rare craftsman of the grass court game, but if the point is giving us the shock of unexplained genius that is, say, Federer's (or McEnroe's) habit, then no chance, mate.