The Gewandhaus can play this stuff in their sleep and sometimes it sounds as if that’s just what they are doing.

★★★★ (out of five) Why are orchestra chiefs still afraid of Joseph Haydn?

Daniel Grimwood shines a light on the music of Adolph von Henselt, one of the most admired Romantic composers and piano virtuosi of the 19th century.

Today, thanks largely to proselytism by Gidon Kremer and his friends, Mieczyslaw Weinberg is no longer obscure but a musical giant, waiting to be discovered.

Most concert pianists are like modern tennis players. They know that only two or three men and women are ever going to win the major tournaments, which leaves all the rest working harder each day in vain pursuit of an inhuman perfection and an inexhaustible hope.

Nothing eases the brain so gently and effectively as the crafted, thoughtful noises of György Kurtág.

The first Bartók concerto, a youthful effusion of innocent love, is not going to change our lives. The Geroge Enescu Octet, on the other hand, might.

The Berlin-based Notos Quartett's debut recording wins kudos for uncovering an ‘unusual’ set of Bartók works, but ultimately it fails to deliver.

★★★★ (out of five) Ronald Brautigam perfectly captures that make-do intent of Felix Mendelssohn's Songs Without Words.

★★★ (out of five) The best fun I’ve had all week is trying to identify the composers of six 18th-century concertos that have turned up in the vaults of the Saxon State University library in Dresden.