CLASSICAL/OPERA

Saint-Saens: Cello Concertos. Maria Kliegel, Bournemouth Sinfonietta/Jean-Francois Monnard (Naxos) Dial-a-track code: 1641

No mention of "the Saint-Saens Cello Concerto" leaves anyone in any doubt about what work is being referred to. But there is a Cello Concerto No. 2, shorter (just 17 minutes) and, in the composer's view, more difficult than the first. Like a lot of Saint-Saens lesser-known music it's well-bred but rather pale. Its formidable challenges, however, hold no fears for Maria Kliegel, whose lightness and fluidity also make for an airy and graceful account of the familiar First Concerto.

The disc, an attractive proposition at under a fiver, includes orchestrations of The Swan, the Suite, Op 16, and the Allegro appassionata, Op 43.

Richard Strauss: "Elektra" (Deutsche Grammophon) Dial-a-track code: 1751

A 100-minute nightmare, said one of the most acclaimed interpreters of the title role of Strauss's high-voltage opera Elektra; another recalled that the first time she saw the piece on stage she felt physically sick. Yes, folks, Elektra delivers quite a wallop. It is also one of the few great works of music drama to be dominated by women - the men, even heroic Orestes, are mere cyphers - and thus provides three terrific parts for a couple of feisty sopranos and a mezzo. Here Alessandra Marc brings a spine-tingling purity to the fiendishly difficult title role, though she impressed me more in her sorrow than her anger; Deborah Voigt plays sister Chrysothemis as touchingly vulnerable and Hanna Schwarz gives monster mamma Klytaemnestra a surprisingly human spin.

Krenek: Symphony No 2. Leipzig Gewandhaus/Lothar Zagrosek (Decca Entartete Musik) Dial-a-track code: 1961

The prolific Austrian-born Ernst Krenek (1900-1991) is still best remembered for his jazz opera Jonny Spielt Auf premiered in 1927. It was actually the fourth of his operas, and his Second Symphony dates from four years earlier, when it caused a scandal at its premiere in Kassel. It's a stylistically prolix three-movement work, just short of 65 minutes in this new performance. There's no lack of bold ideas or striking orchestral colouring, but the 23-year-old composer didn't manage to build convincingly over such large spans. On one level the piece is gloriously naive, on another sprawlingly ineffectual.