Huw Montague Rendall – Wigmore Hall, November 19 [Anthony Dehodencq]

IT’S no secret that conductors tend to live to great age, wielding batons on the concert circuit when the rest of us are bedded down in care homes; and the standard reason given is that wielding batons is good exercise.

But the conductor Herbert Blomstedt once told me the secret was milk – which, as a lifelong teetotaller, is the only thing you’ll find him drinking at receptions. And it’s meaningful advice because, aged 97, he’s still working – as he will be on Nov 21 at the Festival Hall with the Philharmonia Orchestra, conducting a performance of Mahler’s 9th Symphony: southbankcentre.co.uk

If recent experience is anything to go by, he’ll be as alert and effective as someone with less than half his years. But by coincidence there’s another Mahler 9 running the same night under a conductor who is less than half the age of Blomstedt: the comparatively youthful Nicholas Collon, who leads the Royal College of Music Symphony Orchestra at the RCM: rcm.ac.uk

• If you’re old enough to remember the funeral of Princess Diana, you’ll have imprinted on your brain the moment when her coffin was carried from Westminster Abbey to the haunting music of John Tavener’s Song for Athene. Half the world watched and listened. It made Tavener a household name, with knighthood attached. And it features alongside his Funeral Ikos and Requiem Fragments in a Remembrance-related programme of beautiful gloom given by the BBC Singers at St Martin-in-the-Fields, Nov 15. stmartin-in-the-fields.org

• More cheerfully, ENO open a new production of Donizetti’s comic romp The Elixir of Love, Nov 15. Though the company is going through tough times, its fighting spirit was apparent a few weeks ago when an outstanding Turn of the Screw emerged, largely unexpected, from the chaos. So fingers crossed for another hit. Runs to Dec 3. eno.org

Meanwhile, the Royal Academy’s opera course students are edging toward Christmas cheer with Humperdinck’s Hansel and Gretel, running Nov 19-22: ram.ac.uk – and song-lovers should be aware of some choice recitals coming up this week.

Dame Sarah Connolly is at Wigmore Hall, Nov 16, repeating a programme she’s just given at the Bath Mozartfest: wigmore-hall.org.uk. And also worth attention is Huw Montague Rendall – a young baritone about whom there’s a definite buzz right now – appearing at Wigmore Hall, Nov 19, with pianist Malcolm Martineau in the collection of emotionally kaleidoscopic love songs that is Wolf’s Italian Lieder-book. wigmore-hall.org.uk

• This is a busy time of year for community music-making, not least around north London. Camden Choir sing unfamiliar choral music by Puccini (his Messa di Gloria and miniature four-minute Requiem) at St Mary’s Primrose Hill, Nov 16: camdenchoir.london. Camden Symphony Orchestra play Bloch and Elgar at St Cyprian’s Glentworth Street, also Nov 16: camden.org.uk  Fortismere Community Symphony Orchestra play Shostakovich and Tchaikovsky at St Andrew’s, Muswell Hill: fortismeremusiccentre.co.uk

• And finally, something I can’t resist flagging: a young violinist who rejoices (how could you do otherwise) in the exalted name Emmanuel Bach and is launching a CD of Nordic music at Burgh House, Hampstead, Nov 17. I’ve no idea if there’s a family connection. If there is, I daresay he’ll be signing autographs. burghhouse.org.uk