The latest releases reviewed.

HORIZONS Leif Ove Andsnes (piano) EMI Classics 341 6822 ****

Making the right choice of encore is an art unto itself. And programming a whole disc of them is an even greater challenge. In this "personal collection", leading Norwegian pianist Leif Ove Andsnes rises to the occasion with style and taste as well as that most essential of ingredients, unpredictability. He knows that the encore fulfils very much the same kind of function as those little off-menu specials that restaurants with celebrated chefs like to ply their customers with. Andsnes says he came late to an appreciation of the charming musical morsel. But his appetite seems now as voracious as it is versatile. Grieg, Liszt and Mompou each make a double appearance in a fascinating 22-piece selection which also includes contributions by Antheil, Halvorsen, Smetana, Ibert and Cyril Scott. www.emiclassics.com Michael Dervan

HONEGGER, MARTINU, BACH, PINTSCHER, RAVEL Frank Peter Zimmermann (violin), Heinrich Schiff (cello) ECM New Series 476 3150 ****

Paul Griffiths's programme note on these pieces for violin and cello relates all the later music back to Bach. But the other-worldly swirls and washes of Matthias Pintscher's Study I for Treatise on the Veil of 2004, inspired by Cy Twombly's paintings, also obviously relate to the soundscapes of electroacoustic music. The duos by Ravel, Martinu and Honegger were all completed between 1922 and 1932 and explore in various ways both the linear spareness that seems the natural territory of paired violin and cello as well as the textural complexity of which the combination is capable. And the ripeness that Martinu in particular essays would not have been totally alien to the Bach of the Chaconne in D minor. Two canons from The Art of Fugue add some genuine Bach to Zimmermann and Schiff's strongly-presented performances. www.ecmrecords.com Michael Dervan

GRANADOS/DEJOUR: GOYESCAS; EL PELELE Trio Campanella Naxos 8.557709 ****

Arranging Spanish piano music for the guitar is often not so much a matter of adaptation as reverse engineering, since much of the piano writing was itself inspired by the world of the guitar. This new Naxos recording of Enrique Granados's complete Goyescas cycle and its companion piece El Pelele is at the luxury end of the reverse engineering game, with the three guitarists of Trio Campanella (two Danes and a German)creating a depth of textural richness and a complexity of colouring quite out of the reach of any single guitar player. Don't be taken in by the unlikely nature of the undertaking: This is an astonishingly successful transformation of one of the major statements of Spanish musical romanticism. www.naxos.com Michael Dervan

ROUSSEL: SYMPHONIES 2-4; BACCHUS ET ARIANE; LE FESTIN D'ARAIGNÉE; SINFONIETTA Orchestre National de France/Georges Prêtre, Orchestre Colonne/Pierre Dervaux, Paris Conservatoire Orchestra/ André Cluytens EMI Gemini 371 4872 (2 CDs) ****

Albert Roussel (1869-1937) was 25 before he turned from a career in the navy to music, and over 60 when the Boston Symphony premiered his most famous Symphony, his Third, which was specially commissioned for the orchestra's 50th anniversary. This neo-classical work has a striding, outdoor energy that's even more bracing than either its 1934 successor or the Sinfonietta written in between. Roussel's greatest ballet, Bacchus et Ariane (1930), culminates in a Bacchanale peppered with unforgettably rampant brass. The earlier Festin d'Araignée (1912) is more immediate and conventional in its appeal, while the impressively austere Second Symphony of 1921 is written in a style that Roussel later chose to shed. In this valuable collection of recordings made in the 1960s and 1980s, now issued at bargain-basement price, the 1965 performances of the late symphonies under Cluytens are particularly fine. www.emiclassics.com Michael Dervan