CLASSICAL/OPERA

"La Forza Del Destino" (Philips)

Dial-a-track code: 1311

Who says Russians can't sing Italian opera? Nobody, surely, who has heard this new set from Valery Gergiev and his Kirov Opera forces. They have a legitimate claim on the score, too, for this is the original version as performed at the premiere in St Petersburg in 1862. Then, imported Italian singers were all the rage: now, a good many of the world's most exciting voices seem to be Russian, and if you doubt that, check out tenor Gegam Grigorian's ringing Don Alvaro, soprano Galina Gorchakova's velvety Leonora and baritone Nikolai Putilin's resonant Don Carlo., They are accompanied in some style by Gergiev and his agile band: impeccable playing, brilliant recording. Oh, yes: very, very Verdi.

"David Helfgott plays Rachmaninov" (RCA)

Dial-a-track code: 1421

There's not really much you can say about this. It's awful. Pianist David Helfgott, subject of the film Shine, was recorded live in Rachmaninov's Third Concerto (in Copenhagen in November 1995), and in studio in some solo pieces - four Preludes and the Second Sonata. It may indeed be a miracle that a person of such a distressed psychiatric background can perform in public at all, but the miracle in human terms of the film does not extend to the recorded music-making, which is confused and effortful, or pianism, which is limited in range and accuracy.

"Russian Piano School" (Melodiya)

Dial-a-track code: 1531

A crop of altogether superior unknowns rubs shoulders with famous figures in the second batch of Russian Piano School releases costing under £10. Highlights include Maria Grinberg (1908-1978), who manages to be both grand and intimate in repertoire from Seixas, Soler and Scarlatti to Schumann and Brahms, and whose playing is notable for an especially noble cantabile.

Katerina Novitskaya (left, the winner of the 1968 Queen Elizabeth Competition) is bracing and incisive in her teenage recordings of early Prokofiev (the Sarcasms, Sonata No 5 and Visions fugitives are on Vol 20). Grigori Ginsberg - (1904-1961) is swashbuckling and big-boned in operatic fantasies by Liszt and himself (Vol 12). And among the famous, Vladimir Ashkenazy's playing has rarely sounded as fully rounded as it does in his Chopin Studies of 1959 (Volume 17).