This double CD set features Llyr Williams' performances. Somehow, given his distinguished career, I have failed to encounter Williams before. Where have I been? His playing is precise and captures something of the Romantic period. The recording quality is excellent.

Off Duty Is my face just right, am I looking as a widow should? I pass the funeral parlour where four weeks ago the ceremony unfurled. Now I’m laughing with the children. The director of the solemn place is lolling out front, sucking on a cigarette.

Our film critic and media correspondent has been looking and trawling the new releases. Here's what you can see on the big screen this week.

Lindsay Rodden’s vibrantly entertaining and biographically literate reading of the life of Jennie Lee once again gives notice of Mikron Theatre Company’s commitment to voicing the voiceless - especially women. If the socialist firebrand and daughter of a Scots miner has been consigned to the historical margins it might be because she languishes in the shadow of her husband, Aneurin Bevan.

When Take That reunited in 2006 after their breakup, the group returned stronger and more popular than before. Now with Gary Barlow, Mark Owen, and Howard Donald seemingly back for good, the trio arrived at Sheffield Arena for the start of their This Life tour—a mammoth 41-date outing across the country, selling over 700,000 tickets in the process.

Our film critic and media correspondent has been looking and trawling the new releases. Here's what you can see on the big screen this week.

The interaction between the standard sextet combination of two violins, two violas, and two cellos is irresistibly charismatic. The intricacies of both scores are produced with acumination, enabling the harmonic language to be savoured.

The multiple contributors to this CD demand supplementary listening just as the paintings demand supplementary viewing, but I will be narrowing the field down to just four: Korngold, Takemitsu, Lilli Boulanger, and Nina Simone (Jonathan King). These are selected for no more elevated reason than that they have destroyed fewer forests than the likes of Debussy or Britten.

Joseph Marcell was most recently seen in Chiwetel Ejiofor’s debut feature film, The Boy Who Harnessed The Wind. TV credits include Mammoth and I Hate You, both for the BBC and he is soon be seen in Candice Carty-William’s Queenie on Channel 4. His prolific stage credits include Hamlet at the Young Vic with Cush Jumbo, Kathy Burke’s Lady Windermere's Fan, extensive work with Shakespeare’s Globe including the titular role in Bill Buckhurst’s King Lear and Derek Walcott’s Omeros, as well as seasons at the Royal Shakespeare Company. Joseph plays Sir Peter Teazle in The School for Scandal at York Theatre Royal from 23-27 April.

It makes a change to enter the world of spies and spying; fast action, drama and tension with a good old fashioned Russian enemy who needs to be stopped when all efforts to thwart him are, in turn, thwarted by a traitor, at the very heart of British Intelligence.

Opening with the slick America, it is clear that Lyra has the production values to make it on the international stage, but it is with the Rihanna-driven Drink Me Up that the album kicks into fifth gear.

Let me start with a boast: the last time I heard a Mahler symphony was in San Francisco, under the baton of the world famous Michael Tilson Thomas. Surely a production at Huddersfield Town Hall with a provincial orchestra would be worthy, but somehow inferior. Well, how wrong can you be?

The magic and glamour of the hugely popular Spiegeltent returns to Harrogate this summer after a two year break. The lavishly decorated Spiegeltent, which will be resurrected in Crescent Gardens between 28 June and 7 July, is once again the sensational setting for a bespoke programme of music, cabaret, burlesque, jazz, funk and plenty for all the family.

The UK’s biggest live action show is offering one final chance for volunteers to join its cast and crew. Kynren – An Epic Tale of England is hosting its last open call on Tuesday 9th April between 6.30pm and 8pm at Flatts Farm, Bishop Auckland.

Opera North has announced the appointment of Katie Stillman as the new Leader of the Orchestra of Opera North effective from August.

Harrogate International Festivals has announced Peter James as the final Special Guest for the 2024 Theakston Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival, the "world’s largest and most prestigious celebration of crime fiction" taking place 18-21 July.