Sarah Connolly/Joseph Middleton: The World Feels Dusty album review – powerful narrations spanning Ella Fitzgerald to Emily Dickinson

With sweeping, full colour piano Connolly and Middleton pay attention to every word, every harmonic shift in a performance of appealing immediacy

Tosca review – punchy new Puccini rises above the ‘Shame on you’ Russian soprano protests

Outrage over the casting of Anna Netrebko didn’t make it to the inside of the auditorium – where roars of approval greeted this high-stakes game of blood-spattered conflict directed by Oliver Mears

The Kanneh-Masons: River of Music album review – a fond familial affair

Welsh folk songs and an original composition sit alongside Liszt, Chopin, Handel and Elgar in a misty-eyed first half, before a more monochrome performance of Schubert’s Trout Quintet

Vienna Philharmonic/ Welser-Möst review – mighty ensemble strike gold with Bruckner

The Austrian legends glided through Mozart and Tchaikovsky but found grand and powerful direction in Bruckner’s Ninth Symphony

Chineke! Orchestra/Heyward review – kaleidoscopic concert combines energy and complexity

The ethnically diverse orchestra played with vigour and spirit in a programme that included Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, Shostakovich and Valerie Coleman

L’heure espagnole/The Bear review – Scottish opera pairs Ravel with Walton in pacy pantomimic staging

Jacopo Spirei’s double-bill of Ravel’s L’heure espagnole and Walton’s The Bear is huge fun, with baritone Daniel Barrett particularly impressive

Nielsen: Clarinet Concerto; Helios; Symphony No 5 album review – suavity and elegance from Gardner’s Bergen Phil

The teeming textures of Nielsen’s 5th symphony are controlled with care and refinement by Edward Gardner, with the Bergen Philharmonic – and soloist Alessandro Carbonare – outstanding

Mozart: Six String Quintets album review – deep understanding of these under-appreciated works

Spunicunifait (their name taken from a nonsense word used by Mozart) perform these six quintets with flexibility and easy athleticism

BBCSO/Adès review – Adès held the orchestra as if under a spell

A Proms programme of the UK premiere of Gabriella Smith’s Breathing Forests, Sibelius, and Adès’s own music (Five Spells from The Tempest) was atmospheric and engaging

Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District review – semi-staged Shostakovich is vivid and claustrophobic

With Nicky Spence and Amanda Majeski the striking leads, the nastiness in Shostakovich’s ‘tragic satire’ was disturbing and powerful in an impressive Proms performance

Norwegian Chamber Orch/ Kuusisto/Barruk review – Proms first as Ume Sámi songs take centre stage

Pekka Kuusisto and his world-class NCO brought a programme blending classical, folk and pop with Sámi vocalist Katarina Barruk, in this thoughtful Prom

Melbourne Symphony Orchestra/ Martín review – soloist and players gather strength after protesters disrupt Prom

A rattled Khatia Buniatishvili delayed her driven rendition of Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No 1 to the second half of a Prom overshadowed by Palestine protests, yet the orchestra found buoyancy in Dvořák to lift the mood

Lindberg & Aho: Clarinet Concertos album review – Julian Bliss’s performances are immaculate

With Taavi Oramo (also a clarinettist) conducting the BBC Scottish Symphony, Bliss is virtuosic in these two technically demanding but approachable concertos

Bach: The Well-Tempered Clavier, Book 1 album review – Mahan Esfahani’s reading is lucid and illuminating

The harpsichordist describes Bach’s Preludes and Fugues as a ‘challenge and a homecoming’. His thoughtful new recording has a sense of the work’s drama but is never wilful nor perverse

Leipzig Gewandhaus/ Nelsons review – poignancy, poetry and powerful Sibelius in wide-ranging Prom

The venerable orchestra – among the world’s oldest – brought Pärt, Sibelius and Dvořák to the Proms. Isabelle Faust’s sensitive reading of the latter’s Violin Concerto was sleek and organic; the Sibelius well-paced and weighty