Classical

Fou Ts'ong plays Schumann (Carlton Classics, 2 discs) Chopin: Piano Concertos. Fou Ts'ong, Sinfonia Varsovia/Mu Hai Tang (Carlton Classics). Fou Ts'ong plays Mozart (Carlton Classics)

Now in his mid-sixties, pianist Fou Ts'ong is the bestknown of musicians to have emerged from China. Carlton's new selection of his work was taped in 1989 and 1993, at sessions in Poland, where, in the 1955 Chopin Competition, Fou took third place (just behind Ashkenazy) and won the special mazurka prize. The nobility of tone, often extreme rubato and sense of unbridled spontaneity bring an old-world flavour to much of the playing here. The Mozart is boldly drawn but sometimes overblown in emotion. In Schumann the flightiness finds much suitable material, though Kreisleriana is often over-stressed. In the Chopin concertos, however, Fou finds a tensile strength that is all to the music's good. Michael Dervan

Elliott Carter: Chamber Music. Ursula Oppens (piano), Arditti String Quartet (Auvidis Montaigne)

Elliott Carter, grand old man of American music - he'll be 90 in December - is here represented by works from three decades - the Cello Sonata (1948), the Duo for Violin and Piano (mid1970s), and a group all from the 1990s, the Fifth String Quartet, 90+ for piano, Figment for cello solo, and Fragment for string quartet. Carter's knotty old-guard modernism, his adventures of confrontation and abundant fertility of invention seem undiminished with age. The latest of his string quartets is unlikely to disappoint anyone stimulated by its predecessors. First-rate performances recorded in the presence of the composer argue the shorter recent pieces as persuasively as the classic string and piano duos. Michael Dervan

Lasse Thresen: From the Sweet-Scented Streams of Eternity. Norwegian Soloists'Choir/Grete Pedersen Helger (Simax)

This is music with a clear agenda. Lasse Thresen, influential as a teacher and composer in his native Norway, has chosen to produce a disc of vocal music based on the Holy Scriptures of the Baha'i religion. To maximise the reach of the message, he's opted to reflect a range of familiar Western traditions, adopting different styles for different pieces. These range from a slowly-enveloping polychoral tranquility (the title track), through an almost neo-classical flavour (The Light that is Shed from the Heaven of Bounty), a rounded French harmonic resonance (Mon Dieu, Mon Adore), and a sinuous narrative chromatic chant (The Tablet of the Holy Marriner) to something more orientally incantatory (Ya Kafi, Ya Shafi). The choir sings with atmospheric beauty yet the music doesn't fully avoid an aura of artificiality. Michael Dervan