The Lehar hits are a predictable overture/waltz selection, but the performances by Janos Sandor and the Budapest Philharmonic are ideal, ablaze with color and striking rhythmic elasticity (the Budapest rubato is more daring than the Viennese). Sandor programs the standalone concert-waltz masterpiece GOLD UND SILBER as well as rarer selections from FRASQUITA and EVA, and in the PAGANINI extract there's a stellar violin solo played by Istvan Tamas. These performances are so wholly within the authentic Lehar idiom that I rank them alongside the reference standards conducted by Paulik, Boskovsky and Lehar himself. Sandor (1933-2010), it turns out, was born to do this.

Hungarian pianist Annie Fischer made her debut at the age of 10 and studied with Ernst von Dohnányi at the Franz Liszt Academy of Music. Her performance of the Liszt Sonata in B minor won Fischer first prize at the 1933 Liszt International Piano Competition, but her concert career was barely underway when war broke out; Fischer fled to Sweden. Afterwards Fischer returned to Hungary, and although she made her New York debut in 1961, she was only seldom seen in the United States and based her career in continental Europe.

A new recording of a work as often recorded as the Concerto for Orchestra should offer something unusual, as well, and this disc does. Kossuth, a 20-minute symphonic poem, was the 22-year-old composer's first major orchestral composition. The conception owes much to Richard Strauss and the style to Liszt, but there are plenty of hints of material that show up in his mature works. The Village Scenes is a particularly exciting choral-orchestral expansion of a work originally for voices and piano, and the Concerto of course, is enormously popular.

Adam Fischer was born into a family of conductors. His father Sándor Fischer conducted the Budapest Radio Orchestra. His brother Iván, and a cousin, György, are also conductors. The Fischers lived across the street from the Budapest Opera House, and he attended his first concert at the age of five. When Haydn's "Surprise" Symphony was played, he decided to be a conductor so he could make the audience jump. He made his conducting debut at the age of 7, leading an ensemble of children playing toy instruments and singing.

Remembered in the west almost solely for his Soviet-era ballet The Red Poppy – and even then, for one popular selection from it, the energetic "Dance of the Russian Sailors" – Reinhold Glière is long overdue for a revival. If this 2006 recording by the Pulzus String Quartet of two of Glière's four string quartets gives any indication of his music's potential appeal, then it's high time that this neglected oeuvre is reassessed, both by ensembles in search of new repertoire and labels in need of fresh material.

With the exception of listeners who seem afflicted with an addiction for giga-obscure repertoire, such items as Hungaraton's Hans Koessler, Emanuel Moór: Chamber Works would normally register only as an automatic "pass-me-by" choice when found in the bins of classical music retail outlets. If your taste runs to Romantic chamber music, however, you should not overlook this one. The key piece here is the remarkable Sonata No. 2 for cello & piano, Op. 55, by Emanuel Moór, written in 1900 for cellist Anatoli Brandukov, the dedicatee of Rachmaninov's Cello Sonata and Glazunov's Chant du ménéstral.

This CD contains a fine performance of the Michael Haydn's Requiem, but if you are interested in hearing the much discussed striking influence of this Requiem on Mozart's, this is not most persuasive performance. For Rilling gives a rather musically suave reading, emphasizing a certain comforting quality to the music, and though you can still make the comparison, there is a better take on that angle. The old Hinreiner recording which was on a Koch/Schwann lp (I don't think it ever made it to CD) is actually much better for suggesting the almost spooky and dusky similarity between the two works. Still, this one is very heartfelt and enjoyable. But the much more spectacular event on this CD is the St. Francis Mass of Michael Haydn.