The next few days bring positively the last chance for Midlands opera-lovers to catch the two current highly-acclaimed productions from English Touring Opera.

Warwick Arts Centre hosts Mozart's Cosi fan Tutte tonight and Saturday, while tomorrow brings what really is a must-see, Donizetti's Mary, Queen of Scots, with a scintillating pair of protagonists in Queen Elizabeth I and the eponymous Scottish Queen, and a brilliantly-shaped orchestral contribution. All performances start at 7.30pm, with details on 024 7652 4524.

There's more opera at Malvern's spacious Forum Theatre on Saturday, when the Malvern Festival Chorus presents an all-Purcell programme climaxing in the Restoration composer's tiny operatic gem, Dido and Aeneas.

Tomorrow evening the same venue hosts a concert from the renowned London Mozart Players conducted by Andrew Parrott. Beethoven's First Symphony and Mozart's 40th frame Beethoven's great Piano Concerto No.5, the Emperor, in which the soloist is Barry Douglas, renowned winner of the 1986 Tchaikovsky Piano Competition in Moscow (7.30pm for both events, details on 01684 892277).

Another of Beethoven's piano concertos can be heard on Saturday at Symphony Hall, when the CBSO repeats a glorious programme first presented at

there yesterday. Stephen Kovacevich is soloist in the dramatically highlycharged Third Piano Concerto, while the main work is what I regard as the 20th century's greatest symphony, the Sixth composed by Gustav Mahler, with its imagery of grim struggle and the inevitability of Fate's hammer-blows. Ilan Volkov, the youngest conductor ever to be appointed as music director to a BBC Orchestra (the Scottish Symphony) is on the rostrum (7pm, details on 0121 780 3333).

Tonight, meanwhile, Symphony Hall entertains the touring Russian State Symphony Orchestra with an all-Russian programme. Three pieces from ballets by Khachaturian open the evening (listeners will recognise the Spartacus Adagio which was the theme-music to BBC Television's long-running The Onedin Line, with Shostakovich's lovely Second Piano Concerto to follow. Nikolai Demidenko is the soloist in this delicate work. Tchaikovsky's magnificent, fate-driven Fourth

Symphony completes the concert, Mark Gorenstein conducting (7.30pm. details on 0121 780 3333).

Earlier today, the CBSO Centre in Berkley Street holds the latest concert of the wellsupported lunchtime Centre Stage series given by members of the CBSO. This time it's a phalanx of eight cellos, led by the orchestra's popular coprincipal cellist Eduardo Vassallo.

The announced soprano soloist has had to withdraw, so there is a slight change to the advertised programme, with works by South American composers Villa-Lobos, Guerra Vicente and the great tango king Astor Piazzolla (one of Vassallo's specialities), along with the Octet for Cellos by the prolific English composer Gordon Jacob (1.10pm, light lunches and bar available, details on 0121 767 4050).

Thomas Trotter gives his regular lunchtime recital as Birmingham city organist (now well into the 500s) at Birmingham Cathedral on Monday (1pm, details on 0121 236 5622), while the remarkable young organist David Goode pays tribute to Trotter's predecessor George Thalben-Ball by including the latter's Paganini Variationsfor pedals alone in his programme of "Organ Fireworks" at Symphony Hall on Tuesday evening. The concert brings many goodies (pun not intended) too numerous to mention, and covers a huge spectrum from Bach to Messiaen (7.30pm, details on 0121 780 3333).

Stratford's first-rate Orchestra of the Swan concludes its current season at the town's Civic Hall on Wednesday with a highly attractive menu of Wagner (the charming, affectionate Siegfried Idyll, Richard Strauss' late Oboe Concerto, making a sunny and relaxed farewell to the world in contrast to the emotionally searing Metamorphosen and Four Last Songs, and Haydn's delightful Symphony No.91. Edward Kay is the soloist, and David Curtis conducts (7.30pm, details on 01789 207100).