On this new CD, gifted young American violinist Joshua Bell takes on two of the four great warhorses of his instrument in the German repertoire (the other two being the concertos by Bruch and Brahms). And the results are somewhat surprising.
 

Bell is a virtuoso technician and he brings his dexterity to bear on Mendelssohn's Concerto for Violin and Orchestra in E Minor, Op. 64 and Beethoven's titanic Concerto for Violin and Orchestra in D Major, Op. 61. In the former, Bell's technical agility provides a lithe, lyrical presence to the famous opening melody. Later, in the work's third movement, his seamless, effortless phrasing captures the ebullience of lines that seem to glide over the orchestral accompaniment.
 

Over the course of her illustrious career, Martha Argerich has displayed a passion and fire - supported, of course, by impeccable musicianship - that immediately stamp any interpretation of any piece as her own. When she brings these qualities to the chamber music of Schumann - which demands them - the results are overwhelming.
 

How else to describe the the way she attacks the solo section of the "Piu lento" from the composer's Andante und Variationen, Op. 46? The dense clusters of notes explode in flurries of assymetrical harmonies that almost make Schumann seem a sort of proto-modernist. And in the second movement from Fantasiestucke, Op. 73, Argerich pours out her emotions with a rhapsodic fervor.
 

Bassist Edgar Meyer has been rewriting the book on the role of the bass in classical music for some time now, so the pairing of his own compositions with that of 19th century bassist/composer Giovanni Bottesini seems not only fitting, but fated. In his day, Bottesini wrote a book or two on the bass, himself.
 

The two composers share a love of the sheer potentialities of their instrument. On Meyer's Double Concerto For Cello and Double Bass, he and cellist Yo-Yo Ma engage in delirious dialogues in which theme lines intertwine, then explode apart in dizzying technical flourishes. Meyer's bass also traverses a vast and varied musical landscape on his Concerto in D for Double Bass and Orchestra, as he pursues a bluesy, folk-tinged sound that encompasses everything from growling low notes, to stirring, sinewy bluegrass refrains.
 

From the exuberent opening of Vivaldi's Gloria, to the harmonic splendors of the Dixit Dominus and the instrumental wonders of the Magnificat, this album fairly glows with musical charisma and spiritual fervor. The choir moves through the works' broad, block-like chords with an effortless fluidity, while offering eloquent solo passages that engage in delicate interplays with the instruments.
 

Occupying the tonal middle ground between the cello and violin - its two more familiar stringed couterparts - the viola has been notoriously overlooked by composers new and old. On this CD, one of the instrument's masters, Yuri Bashmet, takes on two of the more expressive works in the viola repertoire and wrings from them all the emotion and color that his instrument - and his singular sensibilities - can command.
 

Along with the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, Fabio Biondi's Europa Galante ranks as one of the finest period instrument ensembles in the world. While the former injects an almost modern sensibility and feel to its interpretations, the latter stresses a more elegant, tempered - if no less invigorating - approach.
 

That approach comes to the fore on this set of pieces by Alessandro and Domenico Scarlatti. With a dazzling sense of ease and articulation, Biondi and his cohorts illuminate the ways in which father and son displayed their musical gifts.
 

As guitar virtuoso John Williams explains in the liner notes, the guitar is neither indigenous to Africa nor has it been particularly embraced over the centuries by the continent's musicians. That is, not until the 20th Century when the guitar infiltrated all sorts of pop and traditional African musical forms.
 

On this breezy, light-hearted CD, Williams literally spans the continent in his musical travels and the results are constantly invigorating and surprising. Dense, repetitive African rhythms guide his strings through "Musha Musiki," a dance piece from Zimbabwe that, at times, takes on the sound of a Steve Reich minimalist piece. "Nkosi Sikelel'i Afrika" (the anthem of the African National Congress) is an elegaic hymn, while "Omby" is a Malagsy song that resembles something from France in the MIddle Ages.
 

The quintessintially "Russian" tonal colors of Moussorgsky have been touched up over the decades by various composers, each of whom have brought their own orchestral palettes to his music. On this set, conductor Valery Gergiev does some re-painting of his own.
 

On Pictures At An Exhibition, Gergiev brings his characteristic intensity and charisma to the venerable warhorse. The conductor works his way through Ravel's exquisite arrangement, drawing out the drama and darkness of movements such as "Gnomus" and "Bydlo," while contrasting those with the transluscent textures of "Tuileries." The various "Promenades" which separate many of the movements are each given a singular reading, reflecting the changing moods of the listener/viewer of the expressive "pictures."
 

One of the greater glories of cellist Yo-Yo Ma resides in his musical spirit, one that glides effortlessly over boundaries of time, space, race, creed, culture and custom. Ma doesn't play music as much as he inhabits it - as he moves through it, he affects it, even as he allows it to affect him.
 

On this wondrous CD, Ma - with the help of scores of musicians and composers who are part of his Silk Road Project - brings to life the rich mix of musical traditions of the ancient and fabled Eurasian trade route. The album opens with Mongolian singer Ganbataar Khongorzul warbling a haunting, traditional "long song," and proceeds through Ma's soulful reading of composer Tan Dun's Desert Capriccio from the "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" soundtrack.
 

In between, the cellist and his multi-national cohorts range far and wide, taking in Japanese composer Michio Mamiya's Impressionistic interpretations of Finnish folk songs and Zhao Jiping's starkly evocative Moon Over Guan Mountains. Franghiz Ali-Zadeh's Habil-Sayagy blends Iranian classical music with a Cage-ian prepared piano, while other pieces explore traditional Persian, Chinese and Italian soucrces.
 

Since her career-making performance in La traviata at the Royal Opera House in 1994, Angela Gheorghiu has maintained her position as one of the leading sopranos of her era. On this CD, recorded at a recital at Covent Garden with the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House led by Ion Marin, she demonstrates the various qualities that have made her a diva.
 

Playing to a ravenous audience (whose ecstatic acclaim is, perhaps, a trifle too emphasized on this recording), Gheorghiu essays a vast array of operatic styles and periods. In the process, she displays an elasticity of range and emotional expression that are astonishing.
 

The title of this remarkable CD comes from the "fragments" of ancient music that have come down to us over the centuries and the fragmentation of Christianity (into Eastern and Western sects) that the music mirrored. In fact, this set of vocal pieces from Italy, Greece, Russia, England and France illuminates the ways in which the music reflected spiritual beliefs and refracted them through the stylistic lenses of geography and interpretation.
 

While much of this music is often jumbled together as Gregorian chant, it is hardly so homogeneous. The 13th Century Italian composer Matteo da Perugia's Ave sancta mundi salus has a lithe, almost improvizational feel, while the Greek Communion Hymn for Mid-Pentacost (14th Century) is imbued with a dense melodicism. The English Beata viscera comes with undulating harmonies, while 12 Century French composer Perotin's Viderunt omnes V Notum fecit Dominus has droning textures that shift in trance-like, electronic-sounding layers of sound.
 

Piotr Anderszewski was the recent winner at the prestigious - and lucrative - Irving S. Gilmore International Keyboard Festival, which every four years hands out $300,000 to a "superb pianist and profound musician."
 

On this new CD, Anderszewski fully lives up to the profile of a Gilmore Artist. Picking two of Mozart's more diverse - if chronologically close - works, he brings to each an incisiveness and eloquence that highlight their differences.
 

He opens with a subtle reading of the somber Piano Concerto No. 24, cautiously - then increasingly forcefully - exploring the piece's emotional underpinnings. The dialogue between Anderszewski's playing and that of Sinfonia Vasovia is constantly reinforced with delicate accents and elegant asides that point up the work's inner turmoil.
 

John Dowland was one of the most celebrated composers of the late Elizabethan era and much of his renown was due to his penchant for infusing his works with a sense of melancholy and emotion.
 

Indeed, Dowland's Seaven Teares of 1604, drawn from the musical theme of his immensely popular Lachrimae pavan, sound superficially somber and doleful. But in the hands of master lute player Paul O'Dette and the musicians of the King's Noyse, each of these pavans - and the assorted galiards and almands that are included on this CD - has an intensity and complexity that make them a joy to behold.
 

Since his career-making performance at the Ravinia Festival in 1999, Chinese pianist Lang Lang has become a major new voice in the classical world. On this CD, he takes on one of the warhorses of the repertoire, Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 3 (in a performance recorded live at the London Proms in 2001) and makes it his own.
 

Abetted by an elegant and sympathetic reading by Temirkanov and the St. Petersburg Philharmonic, Lang Lang negotiates the vast range of the work with a dazzling technical and expressive elan. From the simple folk-tinged opening theme to the breathless build-up of the finale, the pianist displays an astonishing grasp of the concerto's broad melodic visions and the myriad intricacies of its countless shifts in mood and emotion.
 

For nearly 30 years, Kronos Quartet has expanded not only the theoretical boundaries, but also the perceptions, of what constitutes "classical" music. On Nuevo, they proceed to the next logical creative step, exploring a new definition of musicmaking itself for a millennium in which cultural, as well musical, borders are combining and intertwining in revolutionary ways and forms.
 

Ostensibly - and, in fact, stunningly - Nuevo is an evocation of the vast musical palette of Mexico. The CD includes everything from arrangements of TV theme songs (Chavosuite), to a take on "Mini Skirt" by the '60s Mexican King of Hi-Fi, Esquivel. Perhaps, the most astonishing track is "12/12," a tone poem about contemporary Mexican life that features the ancient sounds of ethnic percussion, sinuous themes redolent of piquant Latin harmonies and rhythms, all played within the matrix of a rock band that gives the whole piece the feel of an evocative Pink Floyd opus!

Along with the Suites for Unaccompanied Cello, the Sonatas for Violin and Harpsichord are, arguably, among Bach's most ebullient works. Tackling these fiendishly demanding pieces on period instruments, violinist Giuliano Carmignola and harpsichordist Andrea Morcon create musical dialogues that fairly breathe with energy, lyricism and feeling.
 

The dialogues are, in fact, one of the principal keys to this music's greatness. On these pieces, Bach transformed the harpsichord from a supporting role to an instrumental voice of melodic and harmonic singularity. On the Allegro from No. 1 in B minor Carmignola and Marcon leap and twirl about, their themes and harmonies intertwining and recombining in vastly thrilling ways.
 

The demands that Rossini created for his tenors were formidable indeed. In addition to prodigious technical flourishes and vast ranges of emotional expression, his music called for that extra bit of bravura that cannot be taught but instead must be felt and conveyed.
 

Peruvian tenor Juan Diego Florez is equal to the tasks at hand. On this CD, he doesn't sing these arias drawn from Rossini's operas as much as he ravishes them. There's really no other way to describe the passion he pours into "Ah dov'e, dov'e il cimento" from Semiramide or his diabolical way with "Che ascolto" from Otello.
 

In his prodigious career, Schubert came late - in terms of pieces previously written - to the sonata as a means of expression. By the time he reached his greatest heights as a composer, he had not only mastered the form but developed a complex and exquisitely lyrical vocabulary for it.
 

On this CD, Russian pianist Volodos opens with the composer's earliest effort, the Sonata in E major and outlines the evolution of Schubert's train of musical thought through, arguably, his finest, the Sonata in G major which was composed 11 years later.
 

In his keyboard concertos, Bach revised previous works - mostly violin and oboe concertos - even as reinvented them. New keys, chordings and contrapuntal relationships were introduced, but, more importantly, the master composer seemed to expand his creative palette in works that were initially performed in a cafe in Leipzig, as showcases for his own virtuosity.
 

On this CD, Perahia infuses each of these concertos with the sense of enthusiasm and abandon that Bach, no doubt, intended. From the familiar opening motif of No. 3 in D major, to the rapturous largo of No. 5 in F minor, Perahia displays a controlled intensity that is complemented by the disciplined work of the musicians of Academy of St. Martin in the Fields.
 

In many of his works Dvorak used the folk music of his homeland as a point of departure for inspiration, rather than composing arrangements or interpretations of existing folk melodies. In fact, he deployed ethnic rhythms and melodies in such subtle ways that it is often difficult to tell their specific antecedents.
 

On this CD, Fischer and the Budapest Festival Orchestra capture the ebullience and sophistication of Dvorak's Slavonic Dances, Op. 46 and 72. In the former, they offer a suave and exceedingly elegant reading of the playful No. 6 in D major and then contrast that with the rapturous No. 4 in D flat major of the latter.
 

Grieg was one of the masters of the romantic miniature, in which emotions, moods and musical vision coalesce, mature and then evaporate with an intense brevity. When Norwegian Leif Ove Andsnes set out to play the Lyric Pieces (which spanned the composer's creative career), he chose to perform them for this CD in Grieg's own home at Troldhaugen, at the composer's own Steinway.
 

Not that the choice of place or instrument is necessarily telling, but on these pieces, Andsnes displays an uncanny feel for the sinew and texture of Grieg's singular sensibility. On such pieces as Waltz and the peripatetic March of the Trolls, the pianist captures the smoldering rhythmic energy that Grieg could express.
 

While the U.S. and Britain have an almost monopolistic hold on music for the electric guitar and its jazz, blues and rock 'n' roll repertoire, Spain is the home of classical guitar. On this CD, David Russell offers a veritable feast of pieces for the instrument by some of Spain's preeminent composers.
 

Russell does not break any new interpretive ground on these pieces, but he does provide striking, virtuoso renditions of such traditional works as Issac Albeniz's Sevilla and Francisco Tarrega's Recuerdos de la Alhambra with their signature rhythms and melodic flourishes.
 

Composer John Williams is best known for his soundtracks to Steven Spielberg films. But behind the (necessary) drama and bombast of those scores, there lurks a musical intelligence that places them a cut above much "movie music." That intelligence comes to the fore on this CD.
 

In the agile and articulate hands of cellist Yo-Yo Ma, Williams' musical vision is rendered with a delicacy, detail and expansiveness that combine in a moving display of expression. Much of this music is abstract and disonant, but at the core of such sections as the opening to the Concerto for Cello and Orchestra and Heartwood is a sense of pictorial clarity that gives shape and form to the musical themes.
 

Patricia Petibon stares out from the cover of this CD with a coy half smile, all the better to tease the eye at the pleasures to be had within. Her hair is tossled like a maid, the red tresses flared like tendrils of love, lust and emotion.
 

Ah, sometimes appearances aren't deceiving.
 

On this gorgeous album, Petibon - assisted by Les Folies Francioses and its director Patrick Cohen-Akenine - has her way with the music of Rameau, Charpentier, Lully and Grandval. From the early stirrings of French opera, she expresses the joys and exasperations of love on selections from Lully's Armide, her voice at once domineering and tremulous. She flings herself into the musical convolutions of Rameau's Les Indes Galantes with a disciplined exuberence. And on Grandval's Rien du tout, she fairly toys with the listener, her voice offering to sing as it is told.