Fussy direction from Calixto Bieito, but magnificent singing from the cast

Mozart, despite his infant brilliance, was not the all-time classical prodigy. As a performer he was beaten to the wire by the English infant phenomenon William Crotch, who gave his first performance at the age of two. And with Saint-Saens composing waltzes at three, Mozart’s compositional start at five looks relatively sedate. Indeed, as Bayan Northcott suggests in his book “The Way We Listen Now”, the boy Mozart’s rigorous training and easy command of the standard genres and musical clichés of the day meant that he was comparatively late in finding his own true voice. The Wigmore performance of an opera he wrote at eleven gave us a chance to test that theory against reality.

Murder, humiliation, self-sacrifice, revenge … it’s all in  a day’s work for Verdi’s heroes and villains, given voice on this full-throttle compilation by the go-to tenor of his generation.

What is it? The experimental quartet – Pekka Kuusisto and Patricia Kopatchinskaja on violins, Lilli Maijala (viola) and Pieter Wispelwey (cello) – play Beethoven, Britten, Bartok, Mozart, William Byrd, and George Crumb.

Christian Blackshaw occupies a unique niche on the piano circuit. His brilliant early career was powered by the ability, which he had absorbed from his great mentor Clifford Curzon, to make every note sing. His wife’s illness then took him out of the game, which he has now re-entered.

We tend to think of Vivaldi’s violin concertos as springing from a spontaneous urge to create material through which his brilliant pupils could display their talents. And although the twelve works in the collection known as La Stravaganza were indeed dedicated to a Venetian nobleman who had been trained by him, their genesis had more to do with commerce than with art for art’s sake.

Signifying their subversive intent with a lower-case title, quartet-lab aim to revolutionise the quartet repertoire. They are led by the charismatic Pekka Kuusisto, whose credentials as a jazz and folk violinist are as impressive as those for his classical work. Maverick Dutch cellist Pieter Wispelwey has long pioneered unusual arrangements, and with Kuusisto’s Finnish compatriot Lilli Maijala as violist, and with the Moldovan violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaja - who inherited a wider musical perspective from her cimbalom-playing father – these are all seasoned innovators.

What is it? Revival of 1984 production of Puccini’s last opera, directed by Andrei Serban, holds up magnificently. Current cast includes Lise Lindstrom in the title role and Marco Berti as her suitor, Calaf.

Explaining music as well as she plays it is one of pianist Angela Hewitt’s strengths, whether in live performance, such as at her top-to-toe Bach’s Art of Fugue at her own festival in Umbria this summer, a formidable first, or on disc, as here, unfurling Fauré.   She knows that some regard the composer’s Nocturnes, Ballade, and Theme and Variations Opus 73 as “salon” music, and sets out to prove that these short pieces are as complex and nuanced at heart as they are serene and accessible on the surface.

While the big companies trundle out their hackneyed revivals, British Youth Opera ploughs its own furrow, first with a large-scale production of Britten’s “Paul Bunyan”, now with Domenico Cimarosa’s “The Secret Marriage”, an 18th century opera buffa which no major English company has staged in recent memory.

Roman Trekel, Malcolm Martineau

There’s nothing like kicking off a new season with an old favourite.

Prom 72 – Calleja, Orchestra Verdi, Zhang (***)

Prom 73 - Cooper, Lewis (*****)

Prom 74 – Sonnleitner, Vienna Phil, Maazel (***)

Prom 75 – DiDonato, Kennedy, BBCSO, Alsop (*****)

What is it? Osmo Vänska conducts the BBC Symphony Orchestra in Górecki's Symphony of Sorrowful Songs, Anthony Payne's orchestration of Vaughan Williams's Four Last Songs and Tchaikovsky's Sixth, the Pathétique.

The faithful who gazed up at the didactic art of Rome's places of worship did so to the music of Palestrina, whose soaring, arcing lines and setting with conviction of the Mass and other liturgical and biblical texts are wondrously realised in The Sixteen's continuing exploration of the composer.