Classical

Jordan Bak, a marvelous young violist, helped remind us that 20th-century American composers kept audiences in mind even as they created original, boundary-breaking concert music.

What we hear on this recording is a virtuoso who makes it all sound easy, who draws deeply felt emotion and faery-dust thrills from her instrument with a feeling of effortlessness.

This suite is full of heart and likely to move yours, and while it might make you wish you could see the ballet, it won't leave you frozen.

Buratto envelops the listener in what feels like the Schumann's authentic presence, bringing out melody, harmony, and inner voices with both raw feeling and fragile-seeming sensitivity.

The superb musicians of the Chiara offered Pierre Jalbert's fine new String Quartet No. 6 and, with Palmer, Brahms' Clarinet Quintet at the Metropolitan Museum.

Celebrated violinist Anne Akiko Meyers and pianist Akira Eguchi's program ranged from the 28-year-old Beethoven's teemingly imaginative first violin sonata to an evocative work for violin and electronics written in 2009 by the then also 28-year-old Jakub Ciupinski, inspired by the WWII wreck of an Italian ship.

Capturing the imagination is a prominent factor of Wytold's music. His recording has gorgeous soundscapes.

Performing music of Mozart, Richard Strauss, and 20th-century composer Jean Françaix, the four musicians played as one, like lifelong friends, with exquisite sensitivity and skill.

An exclusive interview with composer Thomas Morse on his new opera Frau Schindler, which recently opened in Germany.

This exquisite vocal group puts on energetic, high-spirited concerts that free the ancient music of the Renaissance from the museum and dance it out into the town square.