Classical/Opera

Mompou: The Piano Works, Vol 1. Artur Pizarro (Collins Classics)

The Catalan composer Federico Mompou (18931987) studied in Paris and absorbed from French music those elements which suited his chosen musical path. He concentrated on miniatures (just one piece here runs over five minutes), disengaged himself from tonal exploration in favour of a constantly-anchored, reflective decorativeness and, having found his voice, remained true to it throughout his life. It's surprisingly easy to be disarmed by the naivety and primitivism of his work - and hard not to be in the gently-contoured, lightly-haloed, wistful performances of Artur Pizarro, recorded in 22 pieces (Cancons i Danses and Impresiones Intimas) on a mellow-toned piano, well chosen to match the natural scale of the music.

By Michael Dervan

Mengelberg conducts Strauss (Pearl). Mengelberg conducts the Berlin Philharmonic (Biddulph)

Anyone stirred by last Friday's fine NSO performance of Strauss's Heldenleben will be well rewarded by one of the work's classic recordings made in New York in 1928 under its dedicatee, Willem Mengelberg. The Dutchman ploughs a riveting, idiosyncratic course, breathing heroism through every pore; even in Pearl's muted new transfer the performance, surely the most glowing on disc, shines through. The couplings, with the Concertgebouw Orchestra, are of two further heroic portraits, Strauss's Don Juan and Wagenaar's Cyrano de Bergerac overture. Biddulph's rare war-time Berlin recordings (Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No 1 with Conrad Hansen; Symphony No 5) show the heavy marks of the conductor's fascinating interpretative finger-printing in less consistently favourable light.

By Michael Dervan

Benjamin Britten: "Billy Budd". Halle Orchestra/Kent Nagano (Erato)

Oddly for an opera, silence is the key to Billy Budd: the silence of Captain Vere, who could save the eponymous sailor from wrongful execution with a word; the stammering inarticulacy of Billy himself; the shadowy presence of what, when this opera was written in 1951, would still have been called "the love that dare not speak its name". Odd, then, that this recording is more loquacious than most, restoring as it does material which Britten discarded when he revised the piece in 1960. As sung on this world premiere recording, the four-act original makes fuller dramatic sense, though, live, it may well make for a long night of anguish in the theatre. Never mind: as a matter of record, Thomas Hampson and Anthony Rolfe-Johnson bring the hapless Billy and the guilt-ridden caption, respectively, to glorious vocal life.

By Arminta Wallace