The latest releases reviewed

There's a no-sweat, insouciant bravura about Marc-André Hamelin's handling of the sometimes almost absurd demands of the piano writing of that reclusive 19th-century French maverick Charles- Valentin Alkan. Alkan had a penchant for cutting-edge pianistic virtuosity that can make even the excesses of Liszt sound tame. The music is a peculiar mixture, often unfettered in imagination, sometimes trashy in taste, and usually stretching boundaries of one sort or another. Hamelin's amazing control of voicing and balance, allied to fingerwork that's like greased lightning, enables him to make the extraordinary 50-minute Concerto for solo piano sound more extraordinary than ever. The Op 65 coupling is in more introverted lyrical mode. www.hyperion-records.co.uk  MICHAEL DERVAN

The challenges of late Beethoven encapsulate profundities that make them altogether more widely cherished, among performers and listeners alike, than those of Alkan. Nearly 200 years after its composition, the Hammerklavier Sonata still beckons as a kind of Everest demanding to be tackled. For Mitsuko Uchida, the challenge seems to be to keep the fingers at the beck and command of the head. There's an air of deliberation about her playing, shown in the careful articulation of the opening of Op 101, which manages to exert its influence even at moments when the Hammerklavier's closing fugue seems about to take free flight. The playing here is beautiful and constrained, even at its most fiery. www.deccaclassics.com  MICHAEL DERVAN

The covered tone and raspy finish of hand-stopped notes on the natural horn guarantee that Mozart's horn concertos sound very different when played on period instruments. Soloist Teunis van der Zwart takes a ballsy approach to the First and Fourthof Mozart's horn concertos that's altogether more persuasive than the more tentative norm that seems to prevail among period- instruments colleagues. A similar forwardness of manner is found in the concertos for oboe (Katharina Arfken) and bassoon (Donna Agrell), with much emphasis on the instruments' reedier characteristics. The style of the orchestral playing is forthright, sometimes even gritty, to match. www.uk.hmboutique.com  MICHAEL DERVAN

Marco Longhini and the all-male voices of Delitiae Musicae leave no stone unturned in their explorations of Monteverdi, which are presented with multi-faceted instrumental accompaniment. They delight in rhetorical liberties of pacing and generally aim to cut deep below the surface of the music. Some listeners may find the artifice too high, even arch. But the whole is finished with textures and timbres that are often of such great beauty it must be hard not to be drawn in. With gems like the heart-piercing Lamento d'Arianna, some miscellaneous madrigals, the entire Sixth Book, and the price at Naxos's low level (including texts and translations), the combination is a winner. www.naxos.com MICHAEL DERVAN