Klaus Makela conducts the LPO at the Royal Festival Hall on Sunday [Marco Borggreve/Oslo Philharmonic]

IT’S hard to say what makes a good (still less, a great) conductor, but you know it when you see it. And if one conductor has emerged during the past few years with obvious signs of greatness it’s Klaus Makela: the Finnish wunderkind who breezes into London this week to take the London Philharmonic Orchestra through Mahler’s 10th Symphony.

At the age of only 27 Makela has already collected three of the most desirable jobs on the world circuit, as chief conductor of the Oslo Philharmonic, music director of the Paris Orchestra, and chief conductor designate of the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam. To call that astonishing would be an understatement – but, as I say, you only have to see him in action to understand how it’s come about. He makes things happen. And his Mahler 10 at the Royal Festival Hall on April 29 will be a diary date to circle. southbankcentre.co.uk

• Also worth some circling is May 4 when that paragon of British pianists Stephen Hough plays Beethoven’s 3rd concerto at the Festival Hall – part of a Philharmonia Orchestra programme that includes Carl Nielsen’s 4th Symphony. Nielsen is like aural Prozac: vigorous, uplifting, inspirational, a breath of Scandinavian fresh air. For my money he ranks among the supreme symphonists of all time. And No4 is arguably the finest: a piece I’ve loved since I was a child and went to Denmark on a pilgrimage in search of the composer – only to find (disappointingly) that every second person there was called Carl Nielsen. It’s a common name. But for a music-lover there is just the one. southbankcentre.co.uk

• Puccini’s Tosca strikes me as a pretty heterosexual opera, but a company called Carmina Priapea thinks otherwise and has a production opening at the King’s Head, Islington, that re-imagines (and re-genders) the piece as a dark and murderous power-play in a Soho gay club. How this works can only be intriguing. And if they can sing too, even better. April 29- May 2. kingsheadtheatre.com

• The group of NW3 musicians known as the Hampstead Collective grow ever more ambitious in their programming. And for the public holiday on May 1 they’re doing Handel’s dramatic oratorio Theodora: a piece of such compelling theatricality – about a Roman woman martyred for her Christian faith – it often gets performed as opera. Covent Garden staged it recently. And though this will be a concert performance, expect heart-wrenching music and strong voices in the cast to deliver it. 6pm, Hampstead Parish Church. thehampsteadcollective.com

• A string quartet, a singer and pianist is the sort of grouping you don’t often find on concert platforms – still less when they’re all stars in their own right. But on May 2 at Wigmore Hall, the tenor Mark Padmore and pianist Pavel Kolesnikov join together with the Elias Quartet for music that requires those forces: Vaughan Williams’ On Wenlock Edge (which sets poems by Thomas Hardy) and Fauré’s La Bonne Chanson (which sets poems by Verlaine). Both are stunning pieces. And with such a lustrous line-up of performers it’s the kind of night for which you cancel all alternative engagements. wigmore-hall.org.uk