This is a key weekend for lovers of Indian classical music or the merely sonically adventurous – the Darbar Festival in the Southbank has some of the most extraordinary practioners of the art from both the Carnatic (South Indian) and Hindustani (North Indian) traditions.The most fascinating aspect may be the presence of some really ancient styles notably Dhrupad.

It’s hard to imagine much upstaging Martyn Jacques, the indomitable falsetto frontman of the Tiger Lillies. The gaping mouth of an enormous mythical fish that seems to have swum straight from the canvases of Hieronymus Bosch, projected right across the stage in their new show Rime of the the Ancient Mariner, comes close.

“Marianne Faithfull, you are first of all a timbre, a warm and bewitching voice…” Those were the words of the French Culture Minister in March 2011, when he awarded her the title of Commandeur dans l'Ordre des Arts et Lettres. That celebrated vocal timbre has now settled comfortably, truly, deeply in the baritone register. With its occasional cracks and rawness, it gives her a capacity to interpret and to communicate songs with a rare combination of power and intimacy, backed up by her vast experience of performing in public.

Having witnessed Neil Young’s shambolic O2 concert on Monday – Young treating the occasional venture into his back catalogue with listless contempt whilst serving up multiple banalities from his recent albums – I considered skipping seeing more veteran American rockers.

Equal parts prodigiously talented musician, consistently funny comedian, auteur, theatre performer, free thinker and writer, Reggie Watts is nigh on impossible to pigeonhole. He is a hurricane of furious creativity operating completely in his own lane, hurtling full-speed towards Parts Unknown. Primarily known for his inimitable blend of improvisational music and comedy, each show he performs is completely original, never to be repeated.

The last two years have seen the Tiger Lillies hit a prolific peak of activity, to be found as often on the theatrical as the concert stage, drawing on plenty of influences from outside the UK to boot.

On most of her London visits, Elisabeth Leonskaja has been an unassuming high priestess of the mysteries and depths in core sonatas by Beethoven, Chopin and Schubert. This time she applied her Russian-school style of orchestral pianism, tempered as always by absolute clarity, to burning the mists off Ravel, Debussy and the French-inspired Romanian, Enescu. She went on to give us colossal enlightenment in what must be the greatest work ever composed by a 19-year-old, Brahms’s Third Piano Sonata in F minor.

In 1980, an orchestra and conductor then hardly known in Britain came to the Royal Festival Hall. I went to hear Elisabeth Söderström in Strauss’s Four Last Songs; I left stunned by an unorthodox Sibelius Second Symphony and above all by one of the encores, Cantus to the Memory of Benjamin Britten by one Arvo Pärt.

Steve Earle is country music's great polymath - short story writer, playwright, novelist, activist, actor, oh yes, and singer and songwriter of some of the most acutely intelligent and literate songs in contemporary country. He's adept at evoking the human cost of American history, American politics and the lay of the promised land, and on his latest album, The Low Highway, the first song takes a long, slow panning shot of the body politic. It’s not in great condition. Happily, though, Steve Earle’s muse is.

For a celebration of all that's supposedly best in British television, this year's telly-BAFTAs felt mysteriously flat and anticlimactic. Even perennial host Graham Norton seemed less fleet of foot than usual, though he did manage one caustic barb about the plank-like acting skills of Downton Abbey's Lady Mary. Perhaps he was distracted by his own dual nominations (he won for Entertainment Programme). The ejector seat from his chat show might have been the perfect accoutrement to add a bit of adrenalin to the occasion.