Laurence Equilbey, who will be conducting Fauré’s Requiem at the Barbican [Jean-Baptiste Millot]

ONE of the best-loved works in choral repertoire, Fauré’s Requiem presents an idea of death we’d all vote for: comforting, consoling, scaling down the terror of most other settings. But the tenderness of Fauré’s music, loving you into the afterlife, can sometimes feel unduly sweet; so if you want a darker approach, there’s a performance on Nov 20 at the Barbican that offers one.

Done by the Paris-based Insula Orchestra under conductor Laurence Equilbey, it comes with a film by the once-infamous, now-revered video artist Mat Collishaw that responds to the Requiem with poetically disturbing images of how we make our final exits – from deathbed scenes in a semi-derelict tower-block to the Buddhist practice of “Sky Burial” where corpses are exposed on mountainsides and picked clean by vultures. Having seen the show in Paris earlier this year, I found it grim but heartfelt – and the music was exquisitely performed. So thumbs up. barbican.org.uk

• Every year Highgate’s International Chamber Music Festival brings serious performers to St Anne’s Highgate for concerts of genuine world class. This year has seven events running Nov 23-26 with the likes of cellist Robert Cohen and clarinettist Julian Bliss. And Nov 25 features an all-Mozart programme including opera arias sung by soprano Ailish Tynan and readings by Rowan Atkinson – put together to raise funds for the North London charity Food Bank. chambermusicfestival.co.uk

• Church concerts are in overdrive this week, with the Maxwell String Quartet in the ongoing Spotlight series at St John’s Waterloo, Nov 19 (spotlightchamberconcerts.com); Camden Choir singing Handel’s Judas Maccabaeus at St Mary’s Primrose Hill, Nov 18 (camdenchoir.london/events); and the BBC Singers in a programme given over to that most spectacular of English choral composers Herbert Howells at St Martin-in-the-Fields, Nov 17 – presented for some reason by Ed Balls, who is presumably a fan (stmartin-in-the-fields.org).
But for those with a sense of adventure, there’s also Schoenberg’s seminal if creepy melodrama Pierrot Lunaire on Nov 21 at Hampstead’s Heath Street Baptist Church, done by the thrusting young ensemble Mad Song beside new works by Helen Grime and Asian-Australian composer Rob Hao. An event. madsong.co.uk

• Most people interested in British contemporary music would acknowledge Thomas Ades as its presiding genius these days; and they’d probably list the epic ballet score The Dante Project among his most outstanding recent works. It premiered at the Royal Opera House two years ago, to general acclaim. And it’s back from Nov 18-Dec 2, with the choreography by Wayne Macgregor for which it was written. Exhilarating, powerful (if long), it’s a response to Dante’s Divine Comedy that progresses through hell to purgatory and paradise in breath-taking stage and sound pictures. Be amazed. roh.org.uk

• Finally, two student opera productions worth considering: Gazzaniga’s little-known Don Giovanni Tenorio (a take on the Don Juan story that premiered just before Mozart’s) at the Royal College of Music, Nov 20-25 (rcm.ac.uk); and Handel’s more familiar Ariodante at the Royal Academy of Music, Nov 21-24 (ram.ac.uk).