It’s always good to see a promising young hopeful get his first break; and though not so young (but definitely hopeful), last week’s spotlit debutant was Simon Rattle at the Wigmore Hall, waving his arms but not conducting. He was playing the piano – to accompany his mezzo-soprano wife, in a show called Celebrating Magdalena Kožená, an elaborate and crazily eclectic song recital that involved assistance from assorted other instrumentalists. It had the feel of a variety show. Or maybe, friends performing Hausmusik for personal pleasure. There was certainly a sense of the performers having a good time. But it was brave of Rattle to be in the game. Conductors are the butt of jokes about their inability to do what they expect their players to do. And though they generally have keyboard skills, only a few exhibit them in public. So while half the Wigmore audience were there for Kožená, the other half were there to see if Rattle made a worthy partner for her. To a fair degree, he did. He understood her voice; his playing had dimension, warmth and musicality; he knew what he was doing. But if anything, he knew too much – with the commanding manner you’d expect of a conductor but inhibited by a self-conscious fear of undue prominence. This was a song recital after all, and Kožená was meant to be the star. So you could feel him holding back – sometimes to a degree where there was no piano where there should have been – to anchor the performance, or to keep the pace alive. And elsewhere things felt heavy, leaden, dragging on the chains of Rattle’s efforts not to crowd his missus. So for all its virtues, this enjoyable recital – in which Kožená was on fantastic form – was awkward. Certainly the rare experience of Rattle’s keyboard skills was worth collecting. But he shouldn’t ditch the day job. The composer Alexander Raskatov made headlines several years back with an opera called A Dog’s Heart at the ENO. Last week he had a massive new Mass setting premiered by Clare College Choir, the LPO and soloists such as Iestyn Davies and Mark Padmore at the Festival Hall, conducted by Vladimir Jurowski. And it prompted the question: “Why...?” ... A blisteringly vacuous piece of monumentalism, the Green Mass was brutal, second-hand (Britten’s War Requiem rewritten 50 years on by a Russian polystylist) and banal. Like Britten’s Requiem, it filtered modern poems into the familiar Latin texts – in this case, about how the natural beauties of the earth are under threat. A worthy sentiment but in the hands of Mr Raskatov, an excuse for dreadful music.