Masabane Cecilia Rangwanasha [Vera Elma Vacek]

EVERYBODY knows about the virtuoso pianists coming out of China these days. Chinese virtuoso violinists maybe not; and it’s quite possible that Ning Feng hasn’t featured on your radar yet. But nobody I know can play the showy razzle-dazzle violin repertoire (by Sarasate, Paganini and the like) so effortlessly: it’s phenomenal – although to some extent his reputation suffers for it, because people think he’s all about technique and don’t expect him to deliver substance. Which in fact he does.

On Feb 6 he’s at Wigmore Hall with a decidedly substantial programme of Franck, Messiaen, Poulenc and Saint-Saëns that should clear up any misconceptions about his all-encompassing musicianship. To those who’ve never heard him, my advice is Go. wigmore-hall.org.uk

• Back in the 1980s/90s it seemed like a golden era for British composers, who emerged in number to capture the imagination of the world; and that most of them have now disappeared off the radar is, I suppose, the way it’s always been in music. Reputations come and go. But one major figure still very much performed is Colin Matthews, who is about to celebrate his 80th birthday. And he’ll be helped on Feb 8 at Barbican by the LSO, who have commissioned a new Oboe Concerto from him to mark the event.

By association, oboe concertos tend to suggest English Pastoral dreaming. But he tells me this one will be nothing of the sort: instead, a feisty, spiky shaking of the fist at all those expectations. A big night for contemporary music. barbican.org.uk

• Stylish, sassy and impeccably well-connected on the world contemporary music circuit, the New York-based JACK Quartet are in residence all day at Wigmore Hall, Feb 7, with three programmes of cutting-edge new work. Perhaps not easy listening, but a voyage of discovery. wigmore-hall.org.uk

• Korean pianist Seong-Jin Cho made a huge impression last year touring the complete solo works of Ravel; and this year he’s enjoying comparable profile as a resident artist with the LSO. An example is the batch of concerts – concerto and recital dates – he has at the Barbican and LSO St Luke’s Feb 12, 13 & 15, most of them already sold out, although it’s worth trying for returns. barbican.org.uk

• Not quite in that league but perhaps on his way, the young British pianist Will Harmer is being helped there by the City Music Foundation who programme him, Feb 11, in one of their lunchtime concerts at the newly restored Great Hall of St Barts Hospital, Smithfield. Music by Britten, Ades, and Harmer himself. citymusicfoundation.org

• Big with personality and presence, the magnificent South African soprano Masabane Cecilia Rangwanasha sings Strauss’s Four Last Songs and Mahler’s Ruckert Lieder with pianist Julius Drake at Middle Temple Church, Feb 9. templemusic.org

• London City Orchestra play Stravinsky at St Mark’s Primrose Hill, Feb 7, alongside music by his Soviet contemporary Mosolov: an abrasively futurist score called Iron Foundry that celebrates the muscular work of factory hands. The sort of propagandist piece that, you’d have thought, served Soviet ideology on textbook terms, it didn’t prevent Mosolov ending up in prison – largely on the grounds that factory workers deserved something more tuneful. londoncityorchestra.com