White-knuckle crescendos loom large in that greater-than-ever conductor Neeme  Järvi's spruce Indian summer. Short-term bursts were the chief payoff in tackling Dvořák's deceptively simple-seeming Serenade for Strings with a huge department on all too little rehearsal time, but they also helped to pave the way for the two big events in Shostakovich's Seventh Symphony: not just the infamous "invasion" sequence based on Ravel's Boléro, but above all the final slow burn. It was ultimately here that Järvi's mastery of the long, inward line showed us what creative conducting is all about.

Heavy-goods vehicles stacked with lamentations have been thundering through the Barbican Hall. Saturday's lugubrious Rachmaninov found a mid-20th-century counterpart last night in the tough elegies of Shostakovich's First Violin Concerto - apt for a dedication to those affected by the Japanese earthquake. And the tottering juggernaut of not-quite-great-but-living Russian composer Rodion Shchedrin still clogs the LSO's current season, fortunately in this case only to head a procession ending in the carnival float of what should have been Tchaikovsky's springiest symphony.

Send in the clowns. Or at least that was Vladimir Jurowski’s musical thinking in bringing together the mighty foursome of Prokofiev, Stravinsky, Haydn and Shostakovich and seeing just how far their capricious natures might take us. The allusions and parodies came thick and fast and just when you thought there was no more irony to tap, in came the most outrageous instance of misdirection in the history of 20th-century music: Shostakovich’s Sixth Symphony. And that is no joke.

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.

Valery Gergiev’s survey of the Tchaikovsky symphonies began here on a chilly January night with youthfully idealistic Winter Daydreams thrown into the sharpest relief against a disillusioned and angry Shostakovich whose own journey into the bleak mid-winter was, by the time he penned his Second Violin Concerto, very much a one-way ticket. Two revealing performances, one remarkable young violinist.

Is Shostakovich’s Eleventh a great, grim epic symphony worthy both of its toughest predecessors – 4, 8 and 10 – and of the 1905 massacre it avowedly commemorates, or long-winded film music too subservient to its revolutionary-song material? I used to think the latter, but three conductors have made me change my mind: Rostropovich, taking infinite care over the conjuring of icy Palace Square wastes, Semyon Bychkov winning over the BBC Symphony Orchestra at the Proms and now Vasily Petrenko, pulling off the most profound and surprising coup in what I once found the weakest movement, the finale.

Is Shostakovich’s Eleventh a great, grim epic symphony worthy both of its toughest predecessors – 4, 8 and 10 – and of the 1905 massacre it avowedly commemorates, or long-winded film music too subservient to its revolutionary-song material? I used to think the latter, but three conductors have made me change my mind: Rostropovich, taking infinite care over the conjuring of icy Palace Square wastes, Semyon Bychkov winning over the BBC Symphony Orchestra at the Proms and now Vasily Petrenko, pulling off the most profound and surprising coup in what I once found the weakest movement, the finale.

"Who?" many readers may be asking. You'll have to take it on trust - and a handful of outstanding recordings - that the Russian conductor, viola player and arranger, who died on 2 November aged 86, really was up there among the musical greats of his generation. He played with Rostropovich, Richter and David Oistrakh; he had as close a line to Shostakovich as any recreative artist. But he was no globetrotter following his emigration from the Soviet Union to Israel in 1976, and, as yet another of those "musicians' musicians", he rarely stepped into the limelight.

This month’s releases include two contrasted crossover discs, one in tribute to Armenian Orthodox church music, the other by, er, Phil Collins-era Genesis. There’s an Elgar oratorio, and a disc of choral music inspired by the untimely death of a young royal. Orchestral fireworks can be found in a recording of a well-known British work and there’s some approachable Modernism from a modern Polish master. There’s a thrilling compilation of viola concertos, and a classic recent set of Rachmaninov piano concertos reappears at a lower price. Gershwin turns up on an interesting French disc of 1920s music for piano and orchestra, and a work more often heard in a gaudy orchestral transcription is given an excellent solo piano reading by a young Welsh pianist. There’s an effervescent box of Baroque keyboard music played on piano, and a classic set of Shostakovich from the Brezhnev years reappears after a long absence. Chamber fans should check out Gidon Kremer’s latest release, and those unhappy in love should avoid revelatory readings of two of the best string quartets ever written.

If you were one of the world's top soloists but with a limited concerto stock - as woodwind players' tend to be - wouldn't you find it more rewarding to work as a principal in the orchestral ranks? That's the ideal, surely, but few carry it out in practice. Nicholas Daniel, the beefiest-sounding oboist to appear on the scene since the great Maurice Bourgue, is one who does. Last night he not only shone in the bright ensemble of Beethoven's Second Symphony; he also scored a triumph with a tough new gift to him and the Britten Sinfonia, James MacMillan's latest teeming-with-life concerto.

This season's LSO artist-in-focus, violinist Viktoria Mullova, is an incorrigible off-roader. The rougher the terrain the better. Early, modern, rock, folk: she'll absorb their shocks, vault their bumps, relish their pitfalls and come out without so much as a scratch. So Mullova's opening concert last night was intriguing. Prokofiev's Second Violin Concerto isn't exactly smooth terrain, but its roughness is pretty suburban.