Henryk Górecki

IT isn’t often that a piece of contemporary classical music leaps out of its accustomed niche status to make the composer a household name – but it happened back in 1992 when Classic FM, in its very first week on air, stumbled across a CD of the 3rd Symphony by Polish composer Henryk Górecki.

More evocatively, it was called a Symphony of Sorrowful Songs, the songs in question being texts about parents and children lamenting the loss of each other, and including a poem found scrawled on the wall of a gestapo prison that asks the Virgin Mary to comfort the prisoner’s grieving mother – sung on the disc by the ethereal, child-like voice of American soprano Dawn Upshaw.

The piece had been written some years earlier without causing much of a stir. But with the exposure on Classic FM it touched nerves to an extraordinary degree, and it’s now been turned into a music-theatre piece that runs at English National Opera from April 27. How it works on stage I can’t say – the duration is no more than an hour – but director Isabella Bywater no doubt gives it her best. eno.org

• It sometimes feels as though the Mahler symphonies get done more often than those of Brahms and Beethoven combined. And making the point, there are no less than three of them playing London this week. April 23 brings the dark nocturnal fantasies of No7 to the Barbican, with Simon Rattle conducting the LSO (barbican.org.uk). On April 26 the LPO under Edward Gardner play No5 – perhaps the best-loved with its famously soul-scraping Adagietto – at the Royal Festival Hall (southbankcentre.co.uk). And at the Albert Hall, April 27, the RPO under Vasily Petrenko wade through the immensity of No3 (royalalberthall.com). If you like Mahler, it’s heaven-sent indulgence. If you don’t, stay under the covers.

• Also at the Albert Hall this week is a major platform for Maxim Vengerov – widely thought the greatest violinist on earth until his career hit something of a wall and he went quiet. But he’s back with a vengeance here, April 25, playing not one but two Brahms concertos (the solo violin and the violin/cello double) with the Oxford Philharmonic under Marios Papadopoulos – whose close relationship with Vengerov will hopefully deliver something special. royalalberthall.com

• Can string quartets be cool? They can if they’re the ultra-laid back JACK Quartet, based in New York and stylish masters of unusually programmed. An example is their day-long residence at Wigmore Hall on April 22, where they play three recitals – 11.30am, 3pm & 7.30pm – of music you’ll almost certainly have never heard before but will be pleased to discover. Guaranteed. They’re great ambassadors for the surprising, startling, life-changing. And if you’re up for it, throw yourself at the hour-long, Hindustani-influenced score by Catherine Lamb that fills the afternoon slot. wigmore-hall.org.uk

• Finally, for something more predictable, Beethoven’s late, great keyboard sonatas – Op109, 110 and 111 – feature at LSO St Luke’s on April 26, played by the young Romanian pianist Cristian Sandrin. I heard him deliver all three a few weeks ago in a private performance, and was impressed. lso.co.uk