The Traveller at Salisbury Catherdal

An exciting collaboration between the composer Alec Roth and the writer Vikram Seth with Eastern inflections

Simón BolÍvar Youth Orch/Dudamel

Redefining flamboyance, Tchaikovsky’s allegros were so prestissimo that you imagined steam rising from the fiddlers’ fingers

Katarina Karnéus

The voice of the 1994 winner of the Cardiff Singer of the World Competition sometimes didn’t seem in the best of health

Prom 55: Philharmonia/Mälkki

Mälkki’s cool head was definitely good for Eötvös’s concerto, which flung its eerie clusters of sound around the Albert Hall

Gwyneth Herbert

The young British singer's Soho performance was an endearing mixture of poetic introspection and intelligent swing

Proms 53 and 54: BBCSO/Davis and Royal Philharmonic/Gatti

Andrew Davis conducted the symphony with the authority vital to galvanise the visionary and the violence within the music

Polar Bear

At the heart of the matter was a bravura display of the traditional drummer's art by Seb Rochford

Kate Nash shows the strain in Edinburgh

Just 20 minutes into her festival set, her voice began to crack up and her lyrics were becoming difficult to decipher

Presteigne Festival

In the perfect context for undistracted listening, this Welsh festival lived up to its reputation with a demanding programme

James Yorkston

Yorkston's dry, deadpan air of lingering melancholy was all very sensitive and sensible, but a bit of a yawn

Reading Festival

Bursting with raucous energy and a raw, restless vitality, it remains a festival in the rudest of health

SCO/Mackerras

A beautifully shaped performance where crystal-clear passagework met searching grace and fierce structural intelligence

Prom 46: The Sleeping Beauty

Not a tutu in sight, the work’s sheer length seemed to overspill whatever rehearsal time Valery Gergiev devoted to it

Fazil Say

It isn’t just the Turkish pianist’s tics that grate but more his disregard for line, structure and any emotional resonance

ORR/Gardiner at Usher Hall, Edinburgh

This concert featured the haunting cries of Brahms’s early Begräbnisgesang sung with rare potency by the Monteverdi Choir

Prom 45: BBCSSO/Volkov

The BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra returned reborn, primed for an ear-stretching programme of electro-acoustic adventures

Alanis Morissette at Glasgow Academy

The Canadian singer-songwriter is desperate to move on but her fans only want her in her Nineties incarnation

Le Roi David

Arthur Honegger’s musical spectacle is ingeniously orchestrated, daringly combined and, at its most tender, really rather moving

Prom 41: Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment/Mackerras at the Albert Hall

The robust but sensitive playing of the orchestra found every secret of Handel's heart

The Dodos

The San Francisco trio performed with such energy that their clothes were soaked in sweat midway through the first song