John Rutter [johnrutter.com]

TWENTY-FOUR years ago two wise and honourable men, the Jewish musician Daniel Barenboim and Palestinian academic Edward Said, created something that seemed impossible: an orchestra of young instrumentalists from across the Arab/Israeli divide. Critics dismissed it as naïve; its continued existence hasn’t been easy; and how the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra is holding together right now is hard to imagine. But a chamber group of its members will appear onstage at the Queen Elizabeth Hall on Nov 11, playing Mendelssohn and Beethoven alongside Barenboim’s violinist son Michael.

As Barenboim said from the start, the orchestra was never intended as some fairytale bringer of peace: it’s what he calls “a project against ignorance”, providing a platform for people in conflict to “understand what the other thinks and feels”, and to disagree “without resort to knives”. For that reason alone the QEH concert deserves respectful support. Let’s hope it gets it. southbankcentre.co.uk

• When Stephen Sondheim’s operatic musical Sunday in the Park with George opened on Broadway in 1984, the lead roles were created by singers who would become legends of musical theatre: Mandy Patinkin (as the pointillist painter Georges Seurat) and Bernadette Peters (as his girlfriend, the mischievously named Dot). By coincidence, both are now performing at neighbouring theatres in London. Peters stars in the Sondheim revue Old Friends already eulogised in this column (gielgudtheatre.co.uk), while Patinkin has just opened in a one-man show at the Lyric, Shaftesbury Avenue (nimaxtheatres.com). Sondheim devotees will want to see both – but as Patinkin has a short run, to Nov 19, be quick. I’m not sure what his voice is like these days, but the memory of its high, quicksilver tenor is indelible.

• For 170 years Steinway pianos have been the Rolls Royce of the industry; and to mark the anniversary of the factory’s start in 1853, a conveyor-belt of eminent pianists will grace the stage of Wigmore Hall on Nov 10. Drawn from across generations and genres (classical, jazz, solo, collaborative), they include Elisabeth Leonskaja, Julius Drake, Julian Joseph, Eric Lu… And as you’d normally only expect to see one pianist at a time on a concert stage, the chance to collect so many in the same evening is unmissable. wigmore-hall.org.uk

• You don’t hear much from Nigel Kennedy these days, but the scruffy superstar violinist is still in business, still able to dazzle in his maverick way, and doing so with the Oxford Philharmonic on Nov 14 in a Barbican programme given over to Bach. barbican.org.uk

• Also very much in business at this time of year is John Rutter, whose music is the annual soundtrack to Christmas. But before all that gets going, there’s a grand concert of his non-seasonal works, including the Requiem, with the RPO and Bach Choir at St Paul’s Cathedral on Nov 15. Consider it essential preparation. thebachchoir.org.uk

• Finally, two period-band dates in north London: a staging of French baroque cantatas by the ensemble Saraband at Heath Street Baptist Church, Hampstead, Nov 11 (saraband.co.uk); and music by the 17th-century Jewish-Italian composer Salomone Rossi played by Vache Baroque at Belsize Square Synagogue, also Nov 11 (vachebaroque.com).