Franz Lachner was a friend of Schubert's (though he lived 61 years longer), and in 1828 the two wrote organ fugues together just for the hell of it. Lachner composed a lot and conducted more, before being crushed by the Wagner juggernaut.

Most of his 200 songs have been forgotten, but when musicians of the authority of tenor Mark Padmore and pianist Julius Drake commend the seven Heinrich Heine settings from Lachner's Op 33 collection Sängefahrt, an audience is all ears. The musical language was reminiscent of Schubert, with traces of Erlkönig in the ghostly atmosphere and pounding heartbeat of Die Meerfrau, and also of Beethoven, with some of the quiet despair of An die ferne Geliebte in Die einsame Träne.

This was a worthwhile journey into the archive, but the more significant gain was in then hearing Robert Schumann's Heine settings in the song cycle Dichterliebe, written seven years later. Schumann wins any comparison hands down, but such was the interpretive skill of Padmore and Drake that the emotions appeared as fresh as if we were hearing it for the first time; the Pittville Pump Room's hush was deathly. The Padmore/Drake partnership is truly collaborative, their brilliance all the more satisfying for being understated.

Nothing in Louis Andriessen's music-theatre marathon De Materie is understated. Rather, it is stated and restated with an explosive force, suggesting scant regard for any link between tintinnabulation and tinnitus and putting a cynical perspective on Andriessen's philosophical examination of the relationship of mind and matter. Nevertheless, in the mesmeric performance at Cheltenham's Town Hall by the Royal Northern College of Music New Ensemble there was poetry, too, and in the soprano of Merryn Gamba a voice to note for the future.