Guardian Music — Nero have high concepts and big ideas to spare, but it's pop music they do best, says Alexis PetridisThere's a longstanding tradition that an artist who starts their own record company will use it to sign artists in their own image: they don't call ... more info

Guardian Music — Royal Albert Hall, LondonYou can, on occasion, have too much of a good thing. Donald Runnicles's first Prom with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra opened with Debussy's Prélude à L'Après-Midi d'un Faune and went on to explore its influence on th... more info

Guardian Music — Royal Albert Hall, LondonOliver Knussen seems to have taken up the cause of the Italian composer Niccolò Castiglioni, who died in 1996. Knussen has included Castiglioni's music in a couple of programmes with the London Sinfonietta, and made the exqu... more info

Guardian Music — Bright, young and full of ideas, the Aurora Orchestra meld classical music with anything from jazz to tango to Nico Muhly. Nick Shave meets their dynamic leaderIt's one thing to launch an orchestra; it's quite another to make it a success at a time w... more info

Guardian Music — Royal Albert Hall, LondonOn paper, this was a beguiling, start-of-the-summer-holidays, trans-Pyrenean programme. And, in many ways, it did not disappoint. Debussy's three orchestral Images – of which by far the most substantial is his three-movemen... more info

Guardian Music — Various venues, FifeIt's only seven years old, but this is a festival that knows what it's about and does it well. Don't go expecting what they won't have: the programming is unflinchingly trad (in five days of chamber concerts, there were only three... more info

Guardian Music — Bullock/Sao Paulo SO/Tortelier (Chandos)Two-thirds of this collection of works by Florent Schmitt, the drame muet (unsung opera) La Tragédie de Salomé and the massive setting of Psalm 47, exactly matches the 2007 disc on Hyperion by Thierry Fischer... more info

Guardian Music — Royal Festival Hall, LondonMusic of the postwar avant-garde has long been central to pianist Maurizio Pollini's repertory. Stockhausen's Klavierstücke 7 and 9 have already featured in his Festival Hall recitals, and he brought the entire series to a... more info

Guardian Music — Orchestre National de Lyon/ Märkl(Naxos)In their latest Debussy volume, Jun Märkl and his fine French players turn to orchestrations of piano works by the composer's contemporaries or later admirers. They capture perfectly the flash and dazzle of t... more info

Guardian Music — St George's, BristolHonouring the bicentenary of Franz Liszt's birth, pianist Stephen Hough made the composer's B Minor Sonata the culmination of this recital. For lesser mortals, it would have been enough to ease themselves in with a low-key sequenc... more info