Blier and his skilled cast, soprano Christine Taylor Price, baritone Theo Hoffman, and pianist Bénédicte Jourdois, structured their program thematically, linking the composers’ songs in pairs connected by ideas alternately obvious and obscure. The result was fascinating and enjoyable — if over-reliant on some of Sondheim’s overly familiar hits.

CMS’s latest program, a celebration of perpetual motion, was a great example of what they do. Titled Moto Perpetuo, the evening gathered a team of superb musicians to play musical chairs, in a nicely balanced program of pieces each concluding with a movement in the tradition of the perpetual motion. The moto perpetuo is a composer’s sure-fire crowd-pleasing finale — a musical demonstration of Newton’s first law (an object set in motion…)

Heartbeat Opera’s Manon! is a triumph. Rory Pelsue’s production captures the audience’s attention, and navigates the psychology of the story with gripping focus. Grimsley demonstrates a rare ability to act through coloratura. Her buoyant, agile instrument scintillated, and she delivered the English text clearly and effortlessly.

Ukrainian-Finnish conductor Dalia Stasevska led the New York Philharmonic in a program at David Geffen Hall this week that framed Joshua Bell’s performance in a rediscovered gem with equal parts hope and mourning for the people of Ukraine. An intensely riveting traversal,Benjamin Britten’s Sinfonia da Requiem, Op. 20.

Thile’s deeply personal, idiosyncratic set alternated between songs from his own oeuvre directly into extended passages of Bach. Thile’s nearly two-hour performance focused on the redemptive power of art, communing with Bach’s eternal truths supplied invaluable moments of reflection and meditation. Therapy, even — yes, Bach helps.

The audience arrived to find Zankel Hall arranged as a theatre in the round, encircling a concert grand sharing the stage with a Lumatone, a MIDI controller with a keyboard resembling the left box of an accordion (or the Jankó keyboard), illuminated in ethereal pinks and blues, the room splashed with atmospheric lighting effects. Tao is a pianist who functions thrillingly within traditional classical music trappings, but it was no mere gimmick that his solo return to Carnegie Hall brought a downtown sense of avant-garde to midtown. It’s in his soul.

Former Secretary of State Antony Blinken spoke with eloquent gravitas as he introduced the Orchestra of St. Luke’s, and his own mother, in advance of their monumental Carnegie Hall performance of Leonard Bernstein’s Symphony No. 3, “Kaddish,” commemorating the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. James Conlon conducted the sizable forces — large orchestra, chorus, children’s chorus, soprano soloist, and two speakers.

Liu tore into the Prokofiev with a lion-like focus, slicing through the thorny exterior — occasionally at the expense of rhythmic definition — to savor the protein beneath. I missed some of the rattling bones and militaristic brass in the first movement, Allegro inquieto, but heard the second movement, Andante caloroso, anew. Liu handled the middle section, in which alternate realities seem to collide, with deft clarity.

Taking the stage as soloist in Chopin’s Piano Concerto No. 2 in F Minor, Op. 21, Lim emerged from the wings and greeted the audience dutifully, in a stupor— as if he was performing under duress, or sleep-walking. Not emitting so much as blink or a smile, you wouldn’t have predicted the sensuality that would soon drip from his fingers. Accompanied meticulously by Yamada, who juiced as much color out of Chopin’s subtle orchestration as possible, Lim and the Philharmonic gave a stunningly nimble and entertaining account of Chopin’s early showcase for his own talents.