Classical

Chopin: Four Scherzos. Ivo Pogorelich (piano) (DG)

Ivo Pogorelich, rendered a star by the 1980 Chopin Competition in Warsaw (he became famous for having been eliminated), has been back in the recording studio in recent years. The problem in Warsaw was that some jury members found the idiosyncrasy of his playing as maddening as others found it stimulating. The individuality of his approach has lost nothing with the passing of time. In Chopin's scherzos he seems to have set about achieving a flightiness and wit that could inferred from the title but is rarely encountered in performance. Often sparing of pedal, the playing is pianistically brilliant, full of abrupt turns, sudden terminations, fond lingerings, twists of the unexpected. First impression is of agreeable drollness, and I'm looking forward to finding out how well the approach wears.

Samuel Barber: Premiere Recordings (Pearl)

Piano-playing, fiddle-playing or conducting composers are not all that uncommon. The singing composer, now that's something else. Barber was one, and at the age of 25 recorded his Matthew Arnold setting, Dover Beach. With a slightly plummy baritone, he adopts a style of delivery that's plain, yet he captures "the turbid ebb and flow/Of human misery" better than any other singer I've heard: he speaks from the inside. Barber was clearly very lucky in the early advocates he acquired in concert, and, here, on disc: Toscanini (the Adagio), Bruno Walter (Symphony No 1) and Ormandy (Essay No 1). The trademark romanticism is strongly in evidence in all of these, as in the Cello Sonata (Raya Garbousova). The later Capricorn Concerto under Daniel Saidenberg shows sharper edges.

AG Ritter: Organ Sonatas. Ursula Philippi (MDG)

This disc documents a range of survivals. Firstly, there's the music of August Gottfried Ritter (181185), long forgotten, but currently undergoing a renaissance (which has been reflected in the programmes of the annual organ series at St Michael's, Dun Laoghaire, starting up again on Sunday week). Then there's Ursula Philippi, a German-speaking, Transylvanian Saxon, one of the last musicians allowed to train as an organist under Communist rule in Romania. And, of course, there's the large and luxuriantly warm Sauer organ in Sibiu, which survived many vicissitudes in its eight-decade existence and was lovingly restored two years ago. Ritter was a conservative, industrious craftsman whose four sonatas yield to the chromatic predilections widespread among organ composers of the 19th century.