A couple of weeks ago I picked my classical music highlights of the International Festival programme and promised another list of classical must-sees on the Fringe. So here goes: from zany zimmer frame opera to the most profoundly reflective renaissance polyphony, Verdian comic gold to piobaireachd immersion and Vivaldi redux, my pick of classical music on the Fringe.

Drive By Shooting. An octogenarian discovers that her husband of 60 years has been having an affair with the next door neighbour. Armed with zimmer frames as getaway vehicles, she and a friend stage a hit on the cheating husband. The music builds as a fast and furious thriller, culminating in the immortal operatic line: “shoot the fecker in the pecker!” Composer Brian Irvine has a wicked way with words. The Belfast maverick plays with the daft pizazz of everyday speech, the big drama of Irish rhetoric. Drive By Shooting is a graffiti-style animated opera made in collaboration with writer/director John McIlduff, whose looped video projection is projected life-size onto a wall at Summerhall. It’s macabre, full-frontal comedy told through classic operatic idioms of passion, betrayal and revenge. (Nine performances daily, 15 minutes duration, until August 26 at Summerhall)

Mr McFall’s Chamber. String quartet meets jazz trio via Frank Zappa. Edinburgh’s most gung-ho string players – a collective of intrepid members of the Scottish Chamber Orchestra – are a festival fixture. I have formative memories of the joyously eclectic cabaret nights they hosted more than two decades ago. This year they team up with clarinettist Maximiliano Martín, pianist Paul Harrison and drummer Stuart Brown for a programme that roams from Zappa’s chamber-psych to new works by Harrison, Mike Kearney and Vivian Barty-Taylor. (730pm, August 11 at the Brunton Theatre, Musselburgh; 8pm, August 12 at the Queen’s Hall)

Edinburgh Quartet. If it’s more straight-up quartet repertoire you’re after, the excellent Edinburgh Quartet is playing a series of hour-long afternoon concerts at St Vincent’s Chapel. Beethoven & Schubert at 4pm on August 8; Dvorak and associated folk musics at 4pm on August 10. They also give an evening performance of Haydn’s profoundly reflective Seven Last Words of Our Saviour on the Cross – for which they will be interspersing the movements with specially commissioned poems written and read by the American poet Jennifer Rawson. (730pm, August 12, St Vincent’s Chapel)

The Piobaireachd Society. Classical music of the bagpipes played in the historic St Cecilia’s Hall. The pipers are Callum Beaumont, Glenn Brown, Jamie Forrester and Ian K. MacDonald; the programme includes 400-year-old tunes and new pieces cast in the ancient style. And according to Jack Taylor, president of the Piobaireachd Society, the evening even promises a miracle of tuning technology. “Most people never hear piobaireachd and know nothing of it,” he admits. “Its few devotees must spend long days at competitions and endure obsessive tuning to quench their thirst. We will condense and finesse the experience, and allow the full beauty of our music to be heard by a wider audience. The venue is perfect, and the continuous stream of the best tunes played by world experts without the distraction of tuning will surely mesmerise even the most sceptical. Ears and eyes will be opened to what must be Scotland’s best kept musical secret.” (730pm, August 12, St Cecilia’s Hall)

L’Homme Armé. Robert Carver was Scotland’s Palestrina: a virtuoso renaissance polyphonist whose music for the Chapel Royal of Stirling Castle was complex, florid and intensely beautiful. He’s best known for his stupendous 19-part motet O Bone Jesu; in a programme marking the centenary of the the First World War Armistice, Edinburgh-based early vocal specialists Capella Nova perform Carver’s Missa L’Homme Armé and other exquisite Scottish renaissance works. The programme also presents the first performance of a new Dona Nobis Pacem to celebrate 100 years of female suffrage. (410pm & 610pm, August 16 & 17, Greyfriars Kirk)

Anno. Edinburgh-born Anna Meredith comes home this month. She provided the superbly swaggering, redolent music for the International Festival’s opening spectacular Five Telegrams; she performs an orchestrated version of her synth-pop album Varmints with the Southbank Sinfonia (August 11, Leith Theatre). And as part of the Fringe, she revives her audiovisual remake of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons with the Scottish Ensemble and her illustrator sister Eleanor. The piece is called Anno and it refracts and refreshes Vivaldi’s concertos in brilliantly playful and beguiling ways. The music avoids Vivaldi’s most obvious tunes, instead honing in on tetchy, evasive little hooks. Meredith’s signature trick is to dismantle, smudge, build; she does it with infectious conviction. The Scottish Ensemble play with nimble, kinetic energy; the eloquent visuals are animated watercolours projected onto massive screens surrounding musicians and audience. (Various times, August 17-18, Edinburgh International Conference Centre)

Bach for solo violin. There is good reason that Bach’s solo music is routinely described as the pinnacle of the violin repertoire. The sonatas and partitas journey from gravitas to elation; they contain the spryest dance tunes and the most soul-baring laments. To stand alone on stage with this music is to confront the deepest truths – or as violinist Isabelle Faust put it, “an enormous mass of questions which seems to grow bigger with every attempt to answer them”. Hungarian violinist Tamas Fejes is a refined and expressive player who trained in Budapest and lives in Glasgow as assistant leader of the Royal Scottish National Orchestra. He returns to the Fringe to perform solo Bach in one of the city’s finest acoustics. (2pm, August 19, Canongate Kirk)

Falstaff. Founded nine years ago by Fife baritone Douglas Nairne and Glasgow conductor Alistair Digges, Scotland’s roving opera company has spent the past month touring Verdi’s comic masterpiece from Ayr to Lossiemouth with multiple stops in between. The run culminates in Edinburgh – a fine cast includes former Scottish Opera emerging artists Andrew McTaggart and Hazel McBain. Sung in Italian with English subtitles, accompanied by The Opera Bohemia Ensemble. (730pm, August 24, St Cuthbert’s Church)