Just Biber album review – Podger rises brilliantly to these sonatas’ extreme challenges

The baroque violinist remains true to the spirit of Biber’s music on a new recording of six extremely difficult sonatas, animal noises et al

Penarth chamber music festival review – scaled-down Mahler’s Fourth Symphony emerges as if newly minted

The joy and anarchy of Mahler were brilliantly captured, alongside wild Shostakovich and mellow Brahms

The Merry Widow review – come for the big tunes, stay for the birthday cement mixer

John Savournin has huge fun transplanting Lehár’s fictional Balkan Neverland to mafioso Manhattan in a hyperactive production

La Mer: French Piano Trios album review – expansive, beguiling and unexpected

Works by Saint-Saëns, Mel Bonis and Sally Beamish’s imaginative reinterpretation of Debussy’s La Mer make for a disparate but rounded programme

Berlioz and Ravel album review – his orchestra is responsive to Mäkelä’s every move

It may be missing that edge-of-your-seat excitement it had at last summer’s Proms, but Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique is full of colour and impact, and the energy keeps fizzing on Ravel’s La Valse

Mazeppa review – Tchaikovsky’s blood-thirsty opera is a wild and gruesome ride

David Pountney’s striking staging of this timely tale of a Ukrainian warlord battling Russian power unsettles the stomach as much as it titillates the ear

Rodelinda review – powerplay and pig’s blood in thrillingly energised Handel

Ruth Knight’s production captures the menace and high stakes in this deliciously devilish power struggle with Lucy Crowe whirling her sword like Uma Thurman in Kill Bill

A Visit to Friends/The Gildas Quartet review – Colin Matthews’s luminous new opera opens Aldeburgh in fine style

With a Chekhov-inspired libretto by William Boyd, this ‘opera within an opera’ had an excellent cast and a lucid staging. Another brand new work by Colin Matthews – his vivid Quartet No 6 – featured the following morning

Britten: Sinfonia da Requiem, Winter Words (arr Holloway), etc album review – confirms Gardner’s status as an outstanding conductor of Britten

The first recording of Robin Holloway’s imaginative orchestration of the song cycle Winter Words is fascinating, and completes a superb new disc of Britten’s music

The Lost Tapes, Beethoven sonatas 18,27, 28 & 31 album review – Richter always found something fresh to say

Sviatoslav Richter’s already huge catalogue is enriched by these rediscovered recordings of recitals of Beethoven’s piano sonatas from 1965

Voces8 review – agile and poised vocal group celebrate 20 years, with a little help from their friends

The choir’s birthday concert focused mainly on 20th and 21st-century music with a contemplative bent. Joined in the second half by members old and potentially new, and also the BBC Singers, the sound was thrilling

New Music Biennial review – sitars, thorax-quaking bass and vibrators

A varied weekend in the UK City of Culture showcased a huge range of energetic, imaginative and boundary-crossing new music

Saul review – probing, dark and engrossing staging of Handel’s oratorio

Barrie Kosky’s remarkable 2015 production returns to the summer festival with Christopher Purves and Iestyn Davies superb in the lead roles

Così Fan Tutte review – country house remix offers fresh farce and energy

Misogynist Don Alfonso is at the centre of things in this opera-within-an-opera benefiting from a witty translation into English, formidable arias and scene-stealing acting

Furtwängler: Symphony No 2 album review – conductor’s own massive work has real curiosity value

One of the 20th century’s greatest conductors, Wilhelm Furtwängler, also composed; this, his second symphony, is arguably his finest achievement, but it is unmemorable and feels predictable