Nwando Ebizie’s Ecstasy of the Virtues is at Stone Nest [Claire shovelton]

FEW composers nowadays are powerful: it’s not part of the job description. But 12th-century Germany produced one, and what’s more she was a woman (in a world where women didn’t count for too much) and a nun. Her name was Hildegard of Bingen. She was famous, wise, a polymath able to correspond on (almost) equal terms with Europe’s good and great. And she wrote music that lives on – sometimes adapted to the needs of modern ears but proof of her extraordinary creative vision.

Running this week at Stone Nest, Shaftesbury Avenue, is a show that reinvents her for contemporary audiences with a vengeance. Called Ecstasy of the Virtues, by Nwan­do Ebizie, it turns Hildegard’s musical depiction of the soul’s journey to heaven, Ordo Virtutum, into a 21st-century celebration of diversity, with a performing company drawn from opera, gospel, jazz and Afro-Caribbean backgrounds.

Staged by Mahogany Opera, it runs Sept 25-29. And Stone Nest should be a perfect venue in that it’s not only a former nightclub but a former church with gothic features. Hildegard rocks. And who knows, she might have liked it. stonenest.org

• Rather more conventionally, the Belcea Quartet (who may not rock but pack a punch) have two Beethoven concerts at Wigmore Hall, Sept 25 and 27. And in between, on Sept 26, composer/pianist Thomas Adès give a keyboard recital of music including his own. wigmore-hall.org.uk

But a maybe more rewarding pianist is Boris Giltburg who plays Bach, Rachmaninov and Ravel at JW3 in Finchley Road, Sept 30. jw3.org.uk

And if Bach on a modern Steinway isn’t your thing, the current French star of the harpsichord, Jean Rondeau, plays the composer’s Goldberg Variations at the QEH, Sept 27. southbankcentre.co.uk

• Royal Opera superstar Aigul Akhmetshina has a recital at Milton Court, Sept 30. barbican.org.uk

Meanwhile, the big-in-every-sense opera event of the week – and perhaps the season – is Wagner’s quasi-religious fable Parsifal, playing Covent Garden, Oct 1-18.

Told across 5½ hrs, it’s the epic story of a sick world healed not by its rulers but a guileless fool who blunders his way to resolution. If only it were that simple in real life.

Cast includes one of the most profoundly moving voices of today, baritone Christian Gerhaher. Jakub Hrusa conducts. A must-see, if you can take the time off work: performances start very early. rbo.org.uk

• Other opera: Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas gets a semi-staging at Temple Church, Sept 29, with a fine cast led by Beth Taylor and Anna Dennis. templemusic.org

Also at the Temple is a day devoted to the works of Gerald Finzi, the supremely English-lyrical protégé of Vaughan Williams who was born in St John’s Wood, lived for a while in Hampstead, but dreamed of rolling hills in Gloucestershire. Chamber, choral and orchestral music through Sept 27. templemusic.org

• Finally the saxophone: an instrument you might not want to hear close-up in someone’s sitting-room – it can be piercing – but the saxophonist Gerard McChrystal is a sophisticated player, so it might work when he appears in the Salon Music series at a private house in Highgate. His programme, Sept 30, promises a history of the beast, dating back to the 1840s when it was invented by Adolphe Sax. Details: salonmusic.co.uk