the best romantic jazz collection that I've ever seen.

Daniel Barenboim has always been one of my favourite pianists. I know him mostly as a Beethoven interpreter, but his recording of "Songs without Words" is up there with the best I've heard. The sound quality is as good as you have come to expect from DG and the performance is crystal clear and precise at all times. I aquired this recording beacuse I was keen to play some of the pieces myself but Barenboim has a few ideas of his own that I don't quite agree with. Most of the songs are played just as I imagine Mendelssohn wrote them, but some of them fall out and leaves a "not absolutely perfect after all" feeling inside you. However, if you are a fan of Barenboim you will love this recording. These wonderful songs deserve a unique performer like Barenboim. If you'd like to listen to Barenboim at his best I suggest that you listen to his Beethoven recordings, and especially the sonatnas.

On the evidence of this 1985 collection, Daniel Barenboim sees Mozart's piano sonatas as works for the concert hall rather than the drawing room, and he treats them, in many cases, merely as opportunities for pianistic sport. To be sure, the virtuosic passages are very athletically done, but Barenboim's steely fingered and unsubtle approach deprives the music of much of its elegance and feline grace. For an idea of just how heavy the weather can get, listen to the opening of the C minor Fantasia, K. 475. The marking is forte, but Barenboim lands on the octave C's like a safe on a 10-story drop, detonating the B-flats and A-flats that follow as if he were negotiating one of Liszt's nastier potboilers. He does the same with the left-hand octaves in the "Piu Allegro," and so on to the end of the piece. As a demonstration of piano fortitude, it's impressive, but it doesn't sound much like Mozart–unless, of course, you like your Mozart on the strong side. The engineering gives lots of weight and presence to the piano, but several tracks also exhibit a "hot ground" hum (especially noticeable in the slow movements of K. 279, 280, and 284), which may indeed be disturbing for those who are listening on good equipment. For a more sensitive interpretation, you might consider Mitsuko Uchida's traversal, though it lacks the Barenboim set's bargain price tag. –Ted Libbey

These are the lions in winter, which is not to denigrate the mellow goings-on here, but more to say that this 1961 summit meeting finds the titular giants trés engagé rather than volatile and competitive. The fare is all Ellington tunes, the band is Armstrong's All-Stars, led by Duke on piano. Louis is long past the pyrotechnics of "West End Blues" and the Bessie Smith session, but still offers up some heart-tugging solos that remind us his genius was as much in the expressions of his heart as it was in his embouchure and astonishing instincts (check out "I Got It Bad and That Ain't Good"). Duke plays it gently throughout, an engaging minimalist in this context, and you hear something of the spare impressionism that must have gripped Bill Evans and Vince Guaraldi in their youth. All indirect light and muted repartee, The Complete Sessions surprises in unexpected ways.

Since its release on LP in the mid-1950s, Fritz Reiner's rendition of the Concerto for Orchestra has stood as the standard against which all other recordings of the work are measured. Even after all these years, the recording remains just as convincing and authoritative. Reiner's superb control of his orchestra and of Bartók's rhythms and textures is still unsurpassed, even by dozens of subsequent conductors in the digital age. Likewise, the Music for Strings, Percussion, and Celesta shows just what an incredible ensemble the Chicago Symphony was under Reiner's direction. This umpteenth reissue, in RCA's Living Stereo series, promises to be the one to have, its sonics noticeably improved over the earlier CD release in 1989.