Classical/Opera

Berlioz: Symphonie fantastique. San Francisco Symphony/Michael Tilson Thomas (RCA). Berlioz: Symphonie funebre et triomphale. Orchestre d'Harmonie de la Garde Republicaine /Francois Boulanger (Auvidis Valois)

Michael Tilson Thomas moves through the episodes of Berlioz's Symphonie fantastique with the thrusting swagger of a young man looking for opportunity and anxious not to miss a trick. With keen responses from the San Francisco musicians and a recording of wide dynamic range (fully exploited), the stormy tosses and turns of the composer's "vague des passions" are depicted with colourful turbulence. The two excerpts from the rarely-heard Lelio, with the orchestra's chorus in fine voice, are also characterfully done. The French performance of the symphony written for the 10th anniversary of the 1830 Revolution is grave but lacks grandeur and the recording seems to have an odd perspective. Michael Dervan

Schubert: Piano Sonata in B flat D960; Piano Pieces D946. Mitsuko Uchida (Philips) Schubert: Piano Sonata in A D959; Impromptus D935. Alain Planes (Harmonia Mundi)

Mitsuko Uchida makes plain from the very start of Schubert's late B flat Sonata that she wants to imbue the work with the expansiveness of resignation. The tone colours are muted (the booklet credits a 1962 Steinway), the playing style calling to mind some form of interior meditation rather than anything in the nature of public performance. In the Sonata in A, D959, Alain Planes is magisterial, the shape of Schubert's great design always clearly in sight. Despite the sense of formality there's plenty of microflexibility, too, so that there's no feeling of stiffness. Michael Dervan

Ades: "Powder her Face" (EMI)

A new opera tends to make about as much impact on the cultural scene as a thoroughly sodden squib, but this one - thanks to a couple of expletives and an ear-openingly explicit sex scene - has had more, perhaps, than its fair share of publicity. As a piece of drama it certainly works; the central character, an outrageous Duchess, engages our sympathy right from the early scenes of her colourful heyday until her final, pathetic exit, and the use of a single bass voice in various disapproving guises as Judge, Husband and Hotel Manager is a simple, brilliant stroke. As for the music, only time will tell whether wunderkind Thomas Ades's sparkling score, with its echoes of tangos, tea-dances, Cole Porter and Stravinsky, will win a place in the repertoire. If it does, let's hope everyone remembers the superlative performance of soprano Jill Gomez as the Duchess. Arminta Wallace