Sarod players Amaan and Ayaan Ali Bangash play the Wigmore Hall on July 12 [Marc Allan]

FOR decades, one of the most formidable figures on the London music scene has been Anita Lasker-Wallfisch, the cellist who literally owed her life to the instrument she played. A Jewish teenager in Nazi-occupied Poland, she was sent to Auschwitz where she survived by playing in the Women’s Orchestra organised by the camp to play rousing music as inmates were marched away to whatever end.

A famous story told many times, it will doubtless be told again on July 17, which is Lasker-Wallfisch’s 100th birthday – to be marked with a concert at Wigmore Hall for which an army of musicians, many of them her own family, will crowd the stage and pay tribute to a remarkable and outstandingly resilient woman.

Among the Wallfisch dynasty, which began after the war when she moved to London and co-founded the English Chamber Orchestra, will be her cellist son Raphael, as well as violinist Elizabeth and pianist Benjamin. And though the music – Bach, Bloch, Schubert – could be overwhelmed by history revisited, my guess is it will be delivered with a passion all the greater for the context. wigmore-hall.org.uk

• There’s another musical dynasty emerging in the family of Marios Papadopoulos, founder of the Oxford Philharmonic Orchestra. His son Michael is now on the circuit as a conductor, taking charge of his dad’s band – just for one night, July 11 – with a baroque programme at St Martin-in-the-Fields. Following a father’s footsteps isn’t easy. See how he makes out. st-martin-in-the-fields.org

• Still more family business at the Wigmore when the sarod-playing brothers Amaan and Ayaan Ali Bangash partner violinist Jennifer Pike for some East-meets-West cultural travelling: Bach alongside Indian ragas, July 12. Later the same day their father, master sarod-player Amjad Ali Khan, joins cellist Jiaxin Lloyd Webber in similar vein. wigmore-hall.org.uk

• What happens when two opera composers get the same idea for a new piece and turn into competitors? It happened in 1893 when Puccini and Leoncavallo found they were both setting to music the story that would become La Boheme. It was pure accident that turned into bitter rivalry and a race to see which opera would reach the stage first. And it’s been reimagined as a stage play running at the Park Theatre, N4, to August 9. Called That Bastard Puccini!, the author is a former music journalist James Inverne. The staging is by opera director Daniel Slater. And spoiler alert: Puccini wins. In every sense. parktheatre.co.uk

• North London Chorus are at St James’ Muswell Hill, July 12, for a performance of Elgar’s self-referential oratorio The Music Makers. northlondonchorus.org

And if you have any kind of a voice yourself (beyond an adenoidal croak), know that John Rutter has one of his come-and-sing days at Kings Place, July 13, which will workshop a brand new 20-minute Rutter score called I’ll Make Me a World. Be the first to ease it into life. kingsplace.co.uk

• Finally, the 5th Islington Festival opens July 11 at St Mary’s Upper Street, with an easy-listening programme of Gershwin and Copland. July 12 offers a “walking concert” with chamber music stop-offs in four different venues. And July 13 brings Haydn string quartets in the morning followed by Jazz from the Sol Grimshaw Quintet. Runs until July 20. islingtonfestival.com