Recordings

Holiday ear candy for a variety of tastes

Alternative/Indie

There’s Grammy talk for this here Cat Power record. The Greatest (Matador), released way back in January, recently got re-upped in a “slipcase edition,” with three different covers and all that nonsense. The label brought the price way down too, which means they really want people to hear this thing, not just hear about it—if you somehow haven’t heard, it’s gotten some of the best reviews of the year. The aforementioned Grammy buzz seems like the logical next step; sure, the Cat Power album that should have been nominated was You Are Free, but then this is the type of record Grammy goes for every time: Chan Marshall teamed up with a bunch of classic Memphis studio cats, the guys who gave Al Green his sound back in the day, for this smoky, reflective collection. It’s a recommended stocking-stuffer because it’s the one Cat Power record your mom will probably dig.

The label that Death Cab built—Barsuk Records—had a strong run this year, and one or more of the following should please indie-pop fans of any stripe. Alabama-via-Portland husband-and-wife duo Viva Voce’s Get Yr Blood Sucked Out simultaneously evokes both Deadboy and the Elephantmen and Mazzy Star, and features my favorite song title of the year: “We Do Not Fuck Around.” British oddball Jim Noir is responsible for every note on the charmingly quirky and playful Tower of Love, a record that should appeal to fans of early-’70s Kinks, the Zombies’ Odessey and Oracle, and Neutral Milk Hotel. Teenage sisters Asya and Chloe—known collectively as Smoosh—bridge the gap between Quasi and the Mickey Mouse Club on Free to Stay, with some help from Death Cab’s drummer, Jason McGerr. And the Long Winters’ Putting the Days to Bed may just be the smartest, snarkiest pop release of the year. Very highly recommended.

Speaking of smart and snarky, the Mountain Goats are back with Get Lonely (4AD). It’s a bit of a come-down from last year’s The Sunset Tree, but it’s still dead lovely. And speaking of dead lovely, Yo La Tengo do that several times over on I Am Not Afraid of You and I Will Beat Your Ass (Matador), the new, double-disc release that Slant called “a bloated, overreaching long-player in the tradition of bloated, overreaching long-players like Sign O’ The Times, Exile on Main Street, and London Calling.” Not bad company. At least they didn’t compare it to Sandinista!

From the majors, two records that are actually worth their salt: Beck’s The Information (Interscope) is a groovy, organic affair, and one of his very best. At 15 tracks, it’s too long by half, but for the life of me I can’t find any real filler here, and after last year’s disingenuous Guero, it’s a monster return to form—which is a bizarre thing to say about an artist who has sounded like nine different people on nine different records. For those who prefer the human-sounding Beck of Sea Change with a bit of the Odelay quirk, this is it. Included is a DVD featuring low-budget videos for all of the album tracks, including cameos from Devendra Banhart and a lot of animal costumes. Also from the bigs, the Decemberists’ The Crane Wife (Capitol) is the year’s most ambitious release, complete with two songs that break the 10-minute mark, one being a trilogy that recalls both early Genesis and Jethro Tull. At times, the album is deliberately obtuse; others, almost calculated in a major-label-debut way (“The Perfect Crime” is what it says it is: a painstaking ripoff of “Life During Wartime”). Overall, it’s the most interesting and inviting record so far from a band who, four-or-so albums in, continue to improve with each release.

A few guys who made some of the better music of the mid-1990s are back with new projects. Multi-instrumentalist and producer Matt Mahaffey (formerly of Self, and current Beck sideman) has teamed up with Jeff Turzo (formerly of God Lives Underwater) to form Wired All Wrong. Their debut, Break Out the Battle Tapes (Nitrus), is a delicious mix of postindustrial hard rock, hip-hop and pop, that should appeal to . . . well, fans of Self and God Lives Underwater. Also, Greg Dulli’s post-Afghan Whigs project the Twilight Singers lurched forward with two releases this year—the full-length Powder Burns and a new EP called A Stitch in Time, both on the One Little Indian label. The latter teams the band with the inimitable Mark Lanegan; and the two vocalists in tandem make a menacing pair.

Finally, if you’re filling the stocking of someone who simply cannot be bothered with “normal” music, try these: Wilco drummer Glenn Kotche has released his debut solo record, Mobile (Nonesuch), which lets the ace percussionist tinker away for eight splendid tracks. A 12-minute “Monkey Chant for Solo Drum Kit” could have been the most pretentious thing put to tape all year had it not come from Kotche; his refusal to recognize the boundaries of solo percussion is inspirational. And Brooklyn’s Liars relocated to Berlin (as in Germany) last year, where they recorded the 45-minute avant-weird opus Drum’s Not Dead. It’s packaged with a DVD that features three 45-minute films—one by each band member, each using the entire album as a soundtrack.

—John Brodeur

Beyond Genre

Organizational principles and the need for clarity in the marketplace have dictated that music fall into particular categories. Here follow an assortment of current titles which flaunt their individualism and manage to straddle genres with aplomb.

The Anthology of American Folk Music first appeared on the Folkways label more than 50 years ago. Now Shout Factory has brought forth The Harry Smith Project: The Anthology of American Folk Music Revisited. As a citizen of New York City by geography, and the world-at-large in his outlook, Harry Smith was empowered by concerns aesthetic, social and intellectual. He was the first to anthologize forgotten 78s from the ’20s and ’30s, basically spearheading the folk movement that flourished into the ’60s. In 1999 and 2001, Hal Willner produced a series of five concerts celebrating Smith’s efforts. This box set offers up a pair each of CDs and DVDs. The music bristles with passion and anger, celebrates beauty and dissonance, and offers a spirited sense of community as the remarkable list of performers join in with one another. Where else are you going to hear David Thomas sing alongside jazz bassist Percy Heath, as a small string section scored by Van Dyke Parks glides them through “Fishing Blues”? Or how about Lou Reed burrowing into “See That My Grave Is Kept Clean”? Elvis Costello, Beth Orton, Ed Sanders, Beck, Roswell Rudd with Sonic Youth, the list goes on. This is a party celebrating Harry Smith, but really, it’s celebrating the bonds that tie us all together.

The Dust-to-Digital label is the latest of what can justifiably be called descendants of Harry Smith’s work. Only in operation for a few years, their latest offering is a three-disc set titled How Low Can You Go? This is a collection devoted to the string bass and its role in music from 1925 to 1941. Amazingly annotated in a 96-page book filled with photos and period advertisements, it’s perfect for curling up with during the dark nights of winter. Pop the CDs in the player, toss an extra log on the fire, and let this music from 80 years ago make you wiser and hipper.

Good God! A Gospel Funk Hymnal (Numero Group) is a set of thematically gospel-fueled entreaties rolling forth from delectably incessant grooves. The 18 tracks date mostly from the ’70s and are drawn from obscure Midwestern labels. Many of these records were pressed in small quantities and not distributed very far from their source, some sold just to a particular congregation. The performers range from hopped-up James Brown-inspired singers to the more churchly bearing of vibratoed tenors. “O Yes My Lord” by the Voices of Conquest offers a choir singing a melodic chant over just drums, similar to what Sun Ra was doing with his troupe around the same time. Sam Taylor’s “Heaven on Their Minds” mixes in grand flourishes (vibes, timpani) over a core combo that supports a ballad punctuated by a chorus singing in a meter that defies the uninitiated to jump on board. The song was from a cast recording of a funky reinterpreted musical titled The Soul of Jesus Christ Superstar. And absolutely not to be missed is the raw-edged “That’s Enough” by Brother John Witherspoon. Throughout, these songs are all so danceable, so funky, so honest and committed that they dare not break the hypnotic grooves by proselytizing. They just exhort listeners to dance, to move, to hear and believe.

Plague Songs (4AD) offers 10 artists performing songs, each based on one of the 10 Biblical plagues described in the book of Exodus. No strangers to the world of art songs, the participants include Stephin Merritt, Brian Eno and Robert Wyatt, Laurie Anderson, Scott Walker, and Rufus Wainwright. Originally commissioned by a British arts organization, the recordings flow naturally. Some of the artists involved are at their most subtle, eschewing broad gestures and pomp for quieter circumstances.

Soft Machine’s Middle Earth Masters (Cuneiform) is a recording of the band live in 1967 at the London venue named in the title. This was after the departure of Daevid Allen, when Kevin Ayers (guitar, bass) was doing the bulk of the writing, sharing the vocals with drummer Robert Wyatt. After the discovery of these tapes a decade ago, they sat until a new generation of sonic-enhancement equipment made it possible to repair the once-daunting list of audio problems inherent in them. Though the recordings still are far from perfect, it’s exhilarating to hear such early Soft Machine staples as “Hope for Happiness” and “Why Are We Sleeping?” be blasted by a very loud trio. The moment in the former when Mike Ratledge’s organ enters at full bore is alone worth the price of admission.

This American Life Stories of Hope & Fear (Shout Factory) is the third collection from this NPR program. The two discs are loosely divided into the two conditions named in the title. The emotionally varied highlights include “On Hold No One Can Hear You Scream,” an interview with TAL staffer Julie Snyder, who was having a nearly yearlong battle with the phone company over incorrect charges. Also John Hodgman’s story built around the Slingshot ride on the Boardwalk in Ocean City, N.J. His cleanly delineated descriptions give way to a metaphorical overlay for a quietly emotional piece, made all the more so by his subtly bemused, near-deadpan voice. (He’s also been seen and heard recently on the Apple vs. PC television ads in which he plays the PC.)

The compositions on the new disc by alto saxophonist Rudresh Mohanthappa, Codebook (Pi Recordings), are based on ideas related to cryptography. His quartet features Vijay Iyer on piano, Francois Moutin on bass, and Dan Weiss on drums. The nine pieces are rich with a sense of detail that adheres to the sensibility alluded to in the title, as arrangements and improvisations take an initial frame of reference (i.e., melodic theme) and dissect it. Music is, in its way, a code for a range of human emotions and experiences. It’s able to traverse borders unhindered by language. The packaging was designed to include a decoder ring (which can be used to decipher some of the liner notes) to truly reflect the concepts within.

—David Greenberger

Box Sets

There are several great sets out this season, but none come with a higher recommendation than Orphans: Brawlers, Bawlers and Bastards (Anti), the new three-disc opus from the mighty Tom Waits. Broken up into sets by, according to Waits, the three types of songs he writes (brawlers, bawlers, and bastards, natch), Orphans is easily the best work Waits has done in a dog’s age, and that’s saying a lot coming on the heels of his excellent 2004 release Real Gone. This limited-edition collection includes 54 songs: 30 new recordings and a treasure trove of lost Waits classics, many culled from his years of outstanding film and theater work. Waits has been compiled before in hits collections, and usually by label, which meant entire discs composed strictly of his holding-up-a-lamppost Asylum output, or Tom’s wild years at Island. Orphans marks the first time the old and new Waits have stood side-by-side, and it’s a wonder to hear. The elasticity and theatricality of his voice continues to impress, and with track after track, he reinforces his place as one of America’s greatest storytellers and character actors. Highlights, and there are dozens, include the strangest version of “Sea of Love” you may ever hear, the jarringly current “Road to Peace,” and the jewel of the Dead Man Walking soundtrack, “The Fall of Troy.” There’s so much to say about the music that it’s easy to overlook the packaging, which includes a 94-page booklet that, reportedly (physical advance copies were hard to come by), should provide enough reading fodder to accompany the entire three-plus hours of listening.

With that out of the way, we move to another American treasure of sorts: Sufjan Stevens. The indiest little Christian has done gone and put together a box set—not surprising from a guy who put out four records in the last three years, and who plans on recording an album of material for each of the 50 United States. (Can’t wait for that box set.) Anyway, his Songs for Christmas (Asthmatic Kitty) is a collection of five EPs, all previously released (and available online), of Stevens tackling traditional holiday tunes in his own inimitable manner (read: lots of banjo and glockenspiel). In addition, he presents a handful of exclamatory Yuletide classics-to-be, including “That Was the Worst Christmas Ever!” and “Did I Make You Cry on Christmas Day? (Well, You Deserved It!)” The cutesy packaging includes all five discs (42 tracks, all told), plus a “family portrait,” stickers, and a songbook with lyrics and chords. It’s affordably priced on the Asthmatic Kitty Web site, and would make a great gift for the Jesus-loving hipsters on your list.

Andy Partridge, of XTC relative fame, doesn’t care for touring. Instead he stays home and makes recordings all day, or so it would seem—he’s released eight volumes of the Fuzzy Warbles series so far, compiling more than 100 otherwise unreleased recordings from his solo archives, as well as a bunch of alternate versions of XTC tunes, and a few unfinished numbers that he completed specifically for the series. All eight discs are packaged for easy gifting in the Fuzzy Warbles Collectors Album (Ape House/Ryko), which includes a bonus (ninth!) disc of nine songs exclusive to the box. Also included is an oversized booklet called “A Brief History of Home Taping,” written by Partridge himself, and a sheet of Fuzzy Warbles stamps, mimicking the cover art of the CDs. The box is fashioned to resemble a stamp album (hence the title), and looks to be the discerning pop fan’s best bet this holiday season.

Whilst we’re getting exhaustive, Yep Roc Records completes their series of Billy Bragg reissues with the Volume Two box, compiling the four studio albums from the second half of his career—Workers Playtime, Don’t Try This at Home, William Bloke, and England, Half English—plus a bonus disc of rare and unreleased tracks for each. Over the 14-year span these releases cover, Bragg gradually adds full-band arrangements to his guy-with-guitar sound. Unfortunately, none of his excellent Mermaid Avenue collaborations with Wilco are here (considering the loads of outtakes that have gone around, a box set of those recordings could very well be in the works), but a ninth disc—a DVD featuring two full live performances—rounds out the set nicely.

On the short side: Xylophone-loving post-rock outfit Tortoise have assembled a collection of tracks from foreign singles and tour EPs, some unreleased material, and the entire, long-out-of-print Rhythms, Resolutions & Clusters remix record in a three-CD/one-DVD set called A Lazarus Taxon (Thrill Jockey), named after the “paleontological term for a species that disappears, then reappears in the fossil record.” Sony/Legacy has given the Byrds the big-box treatment with There Is a Season, a comprehensive five-disc set (four CDs and a DVD) featuring nearly 100 songs, plus a bunch of unissued TV performances. Rhino dropped behemoth sets from Björk (Surrounded) and Tori Amos (Piano) this year—both well worth it if you can deal with the price tag—as well as the Bee Gees’ The Studio Albums 1967-1968, which compiles remastered and expanded versions of three of the Gibbs’ finest early (that’s pre-disco) releases: Bee Gees 1st, Horizontal, and Idea. And, if the Jam fan on your list can’t wait for Yep Roc’s domestic issue in January, you can still order an imported copy of Paul Weller’s career-spanning Hit Parade; the four-disc set is broken into one disc for the Jam, one for the Style Council, and two for Weller’s remarkably consistent solo career.

—John Brodeur

Blues, Bluegrass, Celtic and Folk

Shopping for a folk Blues, Celtic or bluegrass fan? An impressive array of top singers and musicians in all these genres just happened to anticipate your holiday needs earlier this year, and obligingly recorded several fine CDs for you to choose from. Here are some good bets:

For the blueshound, one of the year’s hottest releases is harmonica ace Charlie Musselwhite’s Delta Hardware (Realworld). After forays into other genres in recent albums, Musselwhite’s new offering is a sweet homecoming to the blues. As a singer, he’s always been more of an earthy crooner than a belter; his harp playing, here backed by a lean, electric three-piece band, is fabulous. On top of all his mesmerizing riffs and solos, Musselwhite also has penned some socially conscious songs to boot.

Another prime blues choice is Junior Wells’ Live at Theresa’s 1975 (Delmark), a CD culled from a two-night stand at a once-famous bar on Chicago’s South Side. Wells shines on the harmonica, and his singing is comparable to James Brown’s. Buddy Guy’s brother Phil, former Muddy Waters sideman Sammy Lawhorn, and Byther Smith, an undeservedly obscure musician, all play guitar here. The record seems unedited, as it contains Junior’s colorful banter with his responsive audiences in between the songs.

Even though mandolinist and guitarist Ricky Skaggs is also among the best tenors in bluegrass, he forgoes vocals altogether in his latest release, Instrumentals (Skaggs Family Records) and lets the collective strings of his band Kentucky Thunder do the talking. You won’t find any familiar fiddle tunes or old country standards here—Skaggs has written 11 new instrumentals for this record, ranging from jazzy and Celtic-tinged pieces to the hardcore bluegrass fare you’d expect from this acoustic master.

Of David Grisman’s two releases this year, The David Grisman Bluegrass Experience (Acoustic Disc) is 14 tracks of real-deal bluegrass, replete with frenzied flurries of flawless picking and clothespin-on-the-nose singing (the other, Dawg’s Groove, explores the more eclectic side of Grisman’s music). The track list, too, is solidly in the bluegrass mainstream, including chestnuts from the Carter Family, Ralph Stanley, and Flatt and Scruggs, as well as traditional songs.

Irish singer Niamh Parsons grew up in the thick of the 1960s Dublin folk music scene, hobnobbing with the Chieftains and other Celtic luminaries. Her newest CD, The Old Simplicity (Green Linnet), is deceptively titled, as the highly ornamented, traditional vocal style she has mastered is anything but simple. Capably accompanied by acoustic guitarist Graham Dunn, she serves up a rich array of 14 Irish and Scottish songs in her powerful alto.

The guitar is usually relegated to accompaniment in Celtic music, so it’s gratifying when a fine musician makes it a lead voice. Donal Clancy, formerly of the band Danu, has a new instrumental acoustic guitar CD of traditional tunes, Close to Home (Dara) that has drawn praise for its superb fretwork. The dozen tracks here contain jigs, reels, and slow airs, all beautifully played to the spare accompaniment of bagpipe drones, bouzouki, and bodhran.

Pete Seeger got his props, and folk music a shot in the arm last April when Bruce Springsteen released We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions (Columbia). Recorded in three days with a dozen or so banjo, accordion, and fiddle-wielding folkies at Springsteen’s New Jersey farmhouse, the record is a worthy tribute to the rising singer who was blacklisted by the music establishment in the early 1950s after he bravely stood up to McCarthyism (his group, the Weavers, had had a chart-topping hit in 1950 with Goodnight, Irene). Most of the 15 tracks are traditional songs made famous by Seeger and other postwar folksingers, but you’ll hear some of his originals as well.

Lastly, it may be a stretch these days to call Bob Dylan’s music folk, but that’s where he started and that where his heart still seems to be. Critics have called his newest record, Modern Times (Columbia), his best in years. His voice is low and gravelly now, but his distinctive vocal phrasing and songwriting genius remain sure. Even though he set off a contretemps when some astute observers discovered he’d apparently lifted some of the albums lines from a Civil War-era Southern poet named Henry Timrod (adding to the mystery, all the letters of “Timrod” can be found in the title Modern Times, but Dylan’s been mum on this one), it’s a wonderful and important record all the same.

—Glenn Weiser

Christmas Music

Christmas is gifts and parties and fun and joy to the world. Given all that, you’re probably wondering why Aimee Mann, who has no small reputation for creating beautifully gloomy, haunted music, would release One More Drifter in the Snow (SuperEgo). Well, Mann loves the holidays as much as the next glum singer-songwriter. This atmospheric, rootsy, musically spare album includes two worthwhile new songs, Mann’s “Calling on Mary” and the catchy Michael Penn-Jon Brion collaboration “Christmastime.” Along with lovely versions of “The Christmas Song” and “I’ll Be Home for Christmas,” Mann croons Jimmy Webb’s lament “Whatever Happened to Christmas,” duets with Grant Lee Phillips on a funny “You’re a Mean One, Mr. Grinch,” and makes “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” sound like an Aimee Mann song.

Let’s shift from rootsy to funky—a very special holiday place we’ll call Bootsyland. That’s right, Bootsy Collins has made a Christmas album. Christmas Is 4 Ever (Shout Factory) is a mix of seasonally themed originals and old-school favorites transformed by this funkmaster general into grooves guaranteed to make you move. So . . . “Jingle Bells” becomes “Jingle Belz,” “Winter Wonderland” is now “Winterfunkyland,” and “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” is now “Boot-Off.” (Can you guess what “Chestnutz” is?) Guests include MC Danny Ray, Bobby Womack, Bernie Worrell and Snoop Dogg, who contributed “Happy Holidaze” to the mix. Add some special Christmas messages from the likes of George Clinton and Buckethead, and you have all the funky elements to turn the mother out, Santa-style.

What is there to say about Johnny Mathis? The dude has been Mr. Smooth for half a century, and, like Tony Bennett, still sounds great. His new album Gold: A 50th Anniversary Christmas Celebration (Columbia Legacy) is actually a compilation of his favorite tracks from his numerous holiday albums, but also includes a brand-new duet with Bette Midler. Of course, the album begins with “Sleigh Ride”; Leroy Anderson may have written it for the Boston Pops, but Mathis owns the tune.

For everyone who misses Lilith Fair, and wishes maybe it would come back for Christmas, soulful-for-Canada songstress Sarah McLachlan offers up Wintersong (Arista). The arrangements are lush, and the singing is classic McLachlan. While she loses points for opening the disc with “Happy Xmas (War Is Over)”—can we get a moratorium on this one?—she earns ’em back for ending the album with “Christmastime Is Here,” the Peanuts-inspired standard.

Billy Idol is probably the last singer you would associate with the holidays. (Well, aside from Ronnie James Dio.) After you hear Happy Holidays (Unique), however, you will think of the man with the sneer as Mr. Christmas. Unconvinced? Hop on the Internets and shoot on over to Idol’s MySpace page, where you can check out the video for “Jingle Bell Rock.” He sings, swings, snaps his fingers—and almost keeps a straight face. This music is boatloads of fun, and Idol even has a go at “Silent Night.” With Happy Holidays, it’s a nice day for a . . . “White Christmas.”

—Shawn Stone

Classical

It’s a mix of old and new, as usual, which pretty much defines the classical-music world. Old pieces in new performances; newer works suddenly seeming not so new by showing up on reissues of old recordings. And recordings themselves suddenly an old technology as Tower Records folds its tents and record labels cut back drastically on releases.

With the merger of Sony and BMG, two of the most comprehensive back catalogues remain elusive, but a raft of older opera releases gave cause for hope: four by Mozart, including Cosi fan tutte with Leontyne Price; Zubin Mehta conducting a 1992 The Marriage of Figaro; James Levine’s The Magic Flute from the Musikverein in Vienna in 1980; and the Don Giovanni that formed the soundtrack of Joseph Losey’s film. Also, there are four classic BMG Living Stereo editions in SACD form, Verdi’s La Traviata and Puccini’s La Bohème with Moffo and Tucker, along with Puccini’s Madame Butterfly and the Nilsson-Bjoerling Turandot. All are libretto-free: you need to fetch ’em from a specified Web site.

A new view of Mozart emerged in René Jacobs’s version of La Clemenza di Tito (Harmonia Mundi). As expected, the performance is brisk but sensibly so; mezzo Bernarda Fink turns in a stunning performance as Sesto, along with a cast including Alexandrina Pendatchanska as Vitellia and Mark Padmore as Titus.

Bernarda Fink returned to her South American roots with a recording titled Canciones Argentinas (Harmonia Mundi), a collection of 26 songs that fall between art songs and salon pieces, penned by nine composers who celebrated the folk influences on formal music. Fink and her brother, Marcos, trade off solos and share duets, with excellent piano support by Carmen Piazzini. The underrated Carlos Guastavino is one of the composers, along with Luis Gianneo and, of course, Astor Piazzolla.

Another vocal marvel, this one going back some centuries, is Thomas Tallis’s Spem in Alium (Signum), which the King’s Singers recorded by overdubbing their six voices into the 40-voice anthem. It’s another SACD-CD hybrid, and really warrants the fancier gear so you can sink into the amazing sounds of this piece.

While Monteverdi’s madrigals are less complicated, they summon a timeless world of their own, excellently realized by Rinaldo Alessandrini and Concerto Italiano as they tackle Book VIII of the Madrigali guerrieri et amorosi (Naïve). They bring a restless energy to music that deserves such liveliness, even as they do tasteful justice to the songs. (I singled out this group last year for their Brandenburg Concertos.)

Staying in the older-music realm, the dynamic Andrew Manze leads the English Concert in music by Bach’s most innovative son, Carl Philip Emanuel on C.P.E. Bach: Symphonies Nos. 1-4 (Harmonia Mundi); his far-ranging rhythms and harmonies anticipated much of the classical era. His four symphonies are marvels, always surprising, well-suited by Manze’s careful though spirited approach. A bonus is one of C.P.E.’s cello concertos.

Virtuoso playing at its finest spills forth from Hilary Hahn’s new recording, Paganini and Spohr Concertos (DG). Paganini’s Violin Concerto No. 1 is a lightweight, sometimes silly piece that’s nevertheless catchy enough to remain in your brain, and she pairs it with a coeval work: Spohr’s Violin Concerto No. 8, an episodic one-movement piece previously championed by Heifetz. Eiji Oue leads the Swedish Radio Symphony in a terrific-sounding CD.

One of my favorite younger composers is Lera Auerbach, a Russian-born pianist-composer now living in New York and Germany, and who is also acclaimed for her poetry. Two new CDs of her haunting, Shostakovichian music are Preludes and Dreams (BIS), solo piano works that include the traditional 24 preludes, and Ten Dreams, Op. 45, which take the melancholy nature of the Preludes even further. Ballet for a Lonely Violinist (BIS) presents the violin-piano team of Vadim Gluzman and Angela Yoffe; Auerbach’s Lonely Suite, Op. 70, is a killer work that Gluzman easily accomplishes; the disk also includes Shostakovich’s depressing Violin Sonata, Op. 134, and an arrangement by the violinist’s father of Shostakovich’s merrier Jazz Suite No. 1.

You can’t go wrong with chamber music performed by Martha Argerich. A three-CD set from the 2005 Lugano Festival—Martha Argerich and Friends Live From the Lugano Festival (EMI)—is the latest of several such releases, with the elusive pianist sharing the spotlight with the brothers Capuçon (violinist Renaud, cellist Gautier), cellist Mischa Maisky, pianist Gabriela Montero and others in works by Mendelssohn, Beethoven, Rachmaninoff, Brahms and my buddy Guastavino. Check out the crazy Mozart piano sonata for which Grieg wrote a second part!

Heading the list of impressive new orchestral recordings is, as has been the case each of the past few years, a Mahler symphony conducted by Michael Tilson Thomas. As part of the series he’s waxing with the San Francisco Symphony, the latest must-have offering is the Symphony No. 5 (SFSO).

Like the aforementioned Eiji Oue, Paavo Jarvi is a former conductor of the Empire State Youth Orchestra. He flexes his conducting muscles with a fantastic-sounding Telarc recording of two Concertos for Orchestra: those of Bartók and Lutoslawski, both of which thrive in a setting like this with an amazingly crisp Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra.

For the patriot on your shopping list, make the re-acquaintance of Roy Harris, with Symphonies Nos. 3 and 4 (Naxos). Harris’ one-movement Symphony No. 3 is one of his best—and a defining moment in American orchestral writing—and the Symphony No. 4 is one of his silliest, bursting into too-neat sounding folksong every so often. But it grows on you, and, on this good-sounding disc, the Colorado Symphony Orchestra under Marin Alsop does both works proud.

—B.A. Nilsson

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