Southbank bound: Joyce DiDonato [Serji Jasanada]

WHAT does Goethe mean to you? If you were German it would be a great deal: he was probably the greatest poet in the German language – and a statesman, scientist, philosopher besides. There wasn’t much he couldn’t do. But whether that included music is debatable.

When great composers set his words, he didn’t seem to get it. Schubert famously sent him a package of his songs with Goethe texts, and never got the courtesy of a response. And though historians sometimes offer explanations for that massive snub, it will be interesting to see how it’s presented at Wigmore Hall on September 20 when some eminent musicians – including pianist Stephen Hough, singer Alice Coote and song expert Graham Johnson – share a platform with the author of a new Goethe biography: the comparably eminent AN Wilson.

A night of words and music, it will doubtless explore the question of whether Goethe did or didn’t have cloth ears. I place no bets on the result. wigmore-hall.org.uk

• There’s a lot of Stephen Hough around just now. Only last week he was headlining the Last Night of the Proms; and besides Goethe at the Wigmore he’s doing a Nordic Night with the Philharmonia Orchestra at the Festival Hall on September 26. His contribution is the Grieg concerto, always a more engaging piece than you expect an old warhorse to be. Paired with Sibelius’s symphonic fantasy Kullervo. southbankcentre.co.uk

• Launching the Southbank’s new season on September 25 is the charismatic American mezzo Joyce DiDonato, appearing with the LPO in one of her party-pieces: Berlioz’s tempestuous depiction of The Death of Cleopatra. An anguished operatic cantata, it plays alongside music for another angry woman, Barber’s Medea: Dance of Vengeance. And for good measure, there’s some angry Beethoven: the Eroica Symphony he planned as a tribute to Napoleon but then scrubbed the dedication from the score (so forcefully he tore the page) when he learned that the supposed libertarian had declared himself an emperor. As always with Great Composer stories, the facts behind what happened are more complex than you think, but never mind: it’s a powerful score, conducted here by Edward Gardner. southbankcentre.co.uk

• The Royal Opera season opens September 24 with a new production of Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin, which I always think a model of perfection: not a note or gesture out of place, it all works like a dream. Or should. Lauded director Ted Huffman is responsible here. Runs to Oct 14. rbo.org.uk

Meanwhile, poor struggling ENO opens its season less illustriously with a revival of an old (if loveable) Jonathan Miller staging of La Boheme. Runs Sept 26 to Oct 19. eno.org

• The annual Islington Proms are back at St James’s Prebend Street N1, with six concerts running Sept 20-28. There’s a Schubert evening on 21st and Elgar’s Cello Concerto with the Haydn Chamber Orchestra on 28th. islingtonproms.com

And up in Highgate, the intimate but enterprising Salon Music series continues Sept 24 with The Portrait Players: an all-female baroque consort singing/playing a programme based around the brilliance of strong, self-assertive women in the 17th/18th centuries and the music they inspired (presumably from terrified men). salonmusic.co.uk