Probably our last Prom of the season, and a rare chance to see Rattle and the Berlin Phil, playing a challenging programme: Wagner's Prelude and Liebestod from Tristan und Isolde, and Messiaen's Turangalîla-Symphonie.

Our first prom of the year this evening: we joined a packed house to see a mixed programme from the Hallé, conducted by a very youthful-looking Sir Mark Elder. All four works in the programme are notable compositions, each in their very different styles.

Spohr, Rolla and Kalliwoda are not names which trip immediately off the tongue, and yet all were famous violin virtuosi of their day. In a new CD, Vaughan Jones and Riad Chibah are exploring lesser known repertoire at the same time as exploring a less frequently used form: the violin and viola duo.

The form presents serious challenges for the composer. Unlike a solo piece, the duo cannot be a simple demonstration of an individual's virtuosity: rather, the musical range of a concerto or piano piece must be filled with just two instruments, neither of which, other than the occasional double-stop, can play chords.

On Tuesday I attended two: a school's concert organised by Cavatina Trust with the Carducci Quartet in the morning and a crossover event with Stringfever at the Bloomsbury Theatre in the evening. They were very different events, but both could legitimately claim to be bringing classical music to a new, and young audience.

Tuesday 5th June, 2008

When Shostakovich wrote his Symphony no.5 in D minor in 1937, he was literally writing for his life. His opera, Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, had just excited a deluge of vitriol from Stalin, and Shostakovich only escaped arrest and deportation because the official allocated the task was himself purged the night before.

The air of expectation was tangible at the Opéra Bastille in Paris on Monday night as the curtain went up on the second scene to reveal Anna Netrebko, dressed in a long white dress to play Juliet in Bellini's “I Capuleti e I Montecchi” (Capulets and Montagues)..

If you're an amateur musician and go to a performance of Liszt or Chopin by a virtuoso pianist, a common reaction is astonishment at the sheer number of notes they can play. Where, you wonder, are the other two musicians who must be hidden somewhere. Last night at Blackheath Halls, the Wihan Quartet evoked the opposite experience: they were so perfectly together that you could close your eyes and be quite convinced that there was only one person playing.

For someone brought up on Verdi and Bellini, Wagner’s Ring cycle has always been something of a daunting prospect. Eighteen hours of densely packed music is a large mouthful, even when the subject matter is a childhood favourite of Norse mythology and when the music has an outstanding reputation as being vibrant, intense and ground-breaking for its day.

So I was bound to be intrigued by the idea of condensing the important bits into a single one hour concert performance, which is what was done by Dutch composer Henk de Vlieger in his “The Ring, An Orchestral Adventure”, created in 1991 and recently recorded on a Chandos CD by Neeme Järvi with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, accompanied by live performances last week in Glasgow and Edinburgh. Järvi has credibility on the Norse mythology part: his recording with the Gothenburg Symphony of Sibelius's Lemminkäinen suite, based on the Finnish epic the Kalevala, is one of the most entrancing pieces of orchestral music in my collection.

If you go to an opera in a small town in Italy, the experience is very different from the lavish, high-budget experience of a Covent Garden, Glyndebourne or La Scala. The venue might have a few hundred seats, the orchestra a dozen or so players, and you expect a performance with enthusiasm and verve: perhaps less polish from the soloists than the international megastars, and certainly fewer raw decibels, but far more intimacy and fun.

So it’s a welcome surprise to go to a close copy of the same experience at a small venue in London: Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro, sung in English and put on by Opera London, a small opera company started by Colin Jaque and populated by young, aspiring professional singers.