Musical life in Sydney continues to be extraordinarily prodigious, competitive and of high standards. Hardly a weekend passes without at least twenty concerts trawling for audiences.

Despite the technical advances and expanding quantity of recordings, there is no substitute for attending live performances. Here are a few which captured my attention last month.

Two excellent conductors directed the Sydney Symphony Orchestra. Marin Alsop from USA worked wonders with an all-American program of Bernstein, Korngold, and the exultant Symphony No.3 by Copland.

Charles Dutoit gave a vividly exciting Shostakovich Symphony No.5 and supported violinist Chantal Juillet from Canada for Stravinsky's Violin Concerto.

Two other orchestras worth hearing were the North Sydney Symphony under Steven Hillinger at North Sydney Girls' High School, with an enterprising program of Witt (the Jena symphony which used to be wrongly ascribed to Beethoven), Michael Haydn and Respighi; and the Australian Brandenburg Orchestra which included two Mozart concertos with forte-pianist Kristian Bezuidenhout (K488) and bassoonist Jane Gower (K191).

With Antony Walker's Orchestra Of The Antipodes, Musica Viva celebrated its 60th birthday with a splendid baroque program starring the inimitable British soprano Emma Kirkby.

Opera Australia continued its main season with revivals of Humperdinck's Hansel And Gretel, produced with much charm by Elijah Moshinsky, and of Britten's last opera Death In Venice, based on Thomas Mann's novella about an ageing writer's mental conflict between Apollonian intellectualism and Dionysian sensualism.

Richard Hickox conducted a fine cast headed by tenor Philip Langridge and baritone Peter Coleman-Wright.

Other notable concerts included one from the Sydney Children's Choir under the live-wire Lyn Williams that offered the rare Children's Crusade which Britten wrote for the Save The Children Fund in 1968 to a disturbing Bertold Brecht text about Poland in 1939.

A Macquarie Trio recital with Michael Dauth as its impressive new violinist; a stylish recital by expatriate pianist Dunchan Gifford; a Hunters Hill Music recital by 3 Opera Australia rising stars Taryn Fiebig, Henry Choo and Richard Anderson with pianist Andrew Greene were also wworthy of mention this month.