Linbury theatre, London
Six fearless singers and the Chroma Ensemble, conducted with arresting immediacy by Naomi Woo, rise to the challenge of the brutal musical onslaughts and anarchic orchestrations of Philip Venables’ raw, imaginative score

Sarah Kane revolutionised British theatre with five provocative plays written between 1995 and 1999. Her final work, 4.48 Psychosis, was her most personal, confronting the clinical depression she struggled with for years. The play was first performed posthumously in 2000, after she died by suicide in 1999.

The Royal Opera and Guildhall School of Music and Drama commissioned Philip Venables to adapt the play as an opera, which debuted in 2016. The composer, also known for a certain “in-yer-face” approach, set Kane’s original text almost entirely, realising its 24 disjointed sections in a raw, imaginative score teeming with minimalist licks, prickly synth-pop and consoling nods to the baroque. The libretto shifts between poetic abstraction and scathing exchanges between a patient and a psychologist. An ensemble of six female singers navigates themes of depression, isolation and the agonising choices surrounding medication.

Holywell Music Room, Oxford
A perfect example of the Oxford International Song festival’s creative programming, Benjamin Appl’s unforced but focused recital was full of profoundly beautiful music

Over 25 years, the Oxford International Song festival has adopted a creative approach to programming. Benjamin Appl’s pairing of Schubert lieder with spiny miniatures by György Kurtág was a perfect example. Your Schubert crowd isn’t necessarily your Kurtág crew, and yet the 280-year-old Holywell Music Room was packed to the rafters.

Ellen Mawhinney and Daniel Silcock, one of the festival’s Young Artist duos, kicked things off with an aquatic-themed recital that showed off Mawhinney’s powerful soprano and Silcock’s poetic instincts at the piano. From the inspiriting Scottish ballad Kishmul’s Galley to Hamilton Harty’s impassioned Sea Wrack, their smartly curated 15 minutes paved the way for Appl and James Baillieu’s equally satisfying programme, Lines of Life.

Leeds Grand theatre
Patrick Nolan’s thoughtful staging for Opera North shifts Pushkin’s story forward to explore the transition from Soviet state to elitist excess

For an opera rooted in 19th-century Russian romanticism it’s surprising how effortlessly Eugene Onegin can be brought up to date. Patrick Nolan’s thoughtful staging for Opera North, a co-production with Irish National Opera and his own Opera Queensland, manages to capture the aching melancholy of Pushkin’s original while reflecting on the equally gloomy transition from the Brezhnev-era Soviet state to the reckless excess of the pre-Putin oligarchy.

For Tatyana and Onegin, Tchaikovsky’s opera is a case of the road not taken, subtly reflected in the gently elasticated timeframe adopted here. In Act I, Leslie Travers’ crumbling civic gymnasium is commandeered to rehearse a pageant in praise of Soviet agricultural policy. When Madame Larina and the housekeeper Filipyevna chatter on about times past, Lenin-emblazoned flags remind us they would have grown up in the shadow of Stalin. As the gaudy tracksuits and 80s bling (costume designer Elizabeth Gadsby having a field day) of Act II give way to formal evening wear and diamonds in the final act, it feels as though an entire way of life has been swept away, and with it any chance to correct the mistakes of the past.

Frankfurt Radio Symphony/Altinoglu
(Alpha)
Conductor Alain Altinoglu brings weight and purpose while the instrumental solos are piquant and precise.

If the Leningrad was Shostakovich’s official response to the second world war, the Eighth Symphony was his answer to the question: “Will you tell us what you really think?” Written while the fighting was still under way, its immediacy remains striking today, a quality reflected in Alain Altinoglu’s purposeful interpretation with the Frankfurt Radio Symphony orchestra.

You hear that directness at once in the way the strings dig deep, bringing remarkable colours to a 26-minute Adagio that, in the wrong hands, can sound merely bleak and black. Not that Altinoglu shuns the horrors: his phrasing and textural dynamics bring fearsome weight and a sense of wide-eyed terror to the composer’s protracted cry of despair. The orchestra covers itself in glory with instrumental solos that are piquant and precise. Resonant details are captured by an outstanding German production team that manages to outdo the Berlin Philharmonic’s excellent 2020 account under Kirill Petrenko (Shostakovich fans will need both).

Susan Tomes
(Hyperion)
From Marianne Martines – taught by the family lodger, Haydn, to Teresa Carreño who played for Lincoln, there’s names new and old in this fascinating and appealing collection

This attractive compilation came out of Susan Tomes’ research for a book on female pianists across history. As she discovered, many wrote music as well, producing short works for the salons and domestic circles to which they were frequently restricted. Thanks to pioneering performers such as Tomes, some of the dozen women presented here are familiar names, but several will be new to many, as will their appealing compositions.

Take Marianne Martines, given lessons in lieu of rent by the family lodger, Haydn. Her miniature A major sonata possesses the sparkle of Scarlatti. Marianna von Auenbrugger died aged 23, but she was taught by Salieri, who paid for the publication of the Mozartian E-flat major sonata recorded here.