Gianni Schicchi is at St Mary’s Islington

IF there was a national music referendum – and perhaps there should be? – I suspect you’d see more votes for “sad” works than for “happy”. Dancing in the street is all well and good, but it’s the sound of misery that really presses buttons in our psyches. And with that in mind, expect there to be queues around the block for Mourn: a programme of compelling gloom at Stone Nest, Shaftesbury Avenue, devoted to laments, farewells, and how the world responds to death.

Staged by the pioneering period ensemble Figure, it has excerpts from Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas (including the most famous lament of them all), alongside Monteverdi and the rediscovered Baroque genius that is Barbara Strozzi. But this Western music of the past comes paired with a living tradition of Balkan laments – raw, folk-based, unrestrained – performed by bona fide Balkan artists.

Playing Oct 8-10, it promises tsunamis of emotion, atmospherically delivered in a gothic fantasy of a performance space: Stone Nest was once a church and then a nightclub. figureensemble.co.uk

• More conventionally, although not without an element of exploration, Conway Hall’s Sunday concerts continue with the Nous Quartet playing Shostakovich and Schnittke, Oct 4. conwayhall.org.uk

And Wigmore Hall has a busy week, with tenor Robin Tritschler singing Britten, Oct 3; another tenor, Mark Padmore, singing Schumann, Oct 5; the dazzling young Leonkoro Quartet playing Schubert, Oct 6; heart-throb baritone Benjamin Appl in a mixed programme that sweeps through the journey of human life, Oct 7; and countertenor Iestyn Davies breaking away from standard falsetto territory into the Viennese 19th-century romantics, Oct 8. wigmore-hall.org.uk

Meanwhile, just around the corner from the Wigmore – and booked via the Hall’s website – that founding springboard for elite choirs The Sixteen is at St James’s, Spanish Place with a programme of heavy-duty renaissance works including movements from Brumel’s appropriately called Earthquake Mass (written for 12 voice-parts, it’s explosive).

• The Bloomsbury Festival runs through October with a handful of concerts in assorted venues. But upfront I’d recommend the virtuosic young group Madsong who think out of the box and are playing American works by Nico Muhly, Missy Mazzoli and Steve Reich at Bloomsbury Central Baptist Church, Oct 8. bloomsburyfestival.org.uk

• Everyone knows Bizet’s Carmen, and a good few love his Pearl Fishers. But there are plenty more of the composer’s stageworks that are never done; and among them is the 27-number score he wrote for a speech-with-music melodrama called L’Arlesienne (The Maid from Arles). It’s only heard these days reduced to two short suites. But conductor Mark Elder and the Age of Enlightenment Orchestra are doing the whole thing, with actors, at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, Oct 9 & 10. Taking the band at their word, it should be enlightening. southbankcentre.co.uk

• Puccini’s one-act Gianni Schicchi is a perfect little comedy, chiefly remembered for a pleading aria, O mio babbino caro, that reliably stops the show – as it will when a new small-scale touring company Kleine Opera, do it at St Mary’s Islington, Oct 2. kleineopera.com

• Finally, the London Bach Society have an 80th anniversary festival devoted to the great Johann Sebastian and running in various venues Oct 9-Nov 10. Starts with a singing competition at St George’s Hanover Square. bachlive.co.uk