This week's Classical CDs reviewed

BACH: FLUTE CONCERTOS
Marcello Gatti (flute), Ensemble Aurora/Enrico Gatti (violin) Glossa GCD 921204*****

Flute players have not done badly out of the output of the great Johann Sebastian Bach. Yet the use of the description "flute concertos" on this new Glossa CD may raise an eyebrow or two. The three works included are the orchestral Ouverture in B minor, an early version of the Fifth Brandenburg Concerto, and a "lost" Flute Concerto in B minor, reconstructed by Francesco Zimei from a sinfonia and two arias from cantatas. Flautists will surely rejoice, for the results of the reconstruction are thoroughly persuasive in Marcello Gatti's svelte performance with Ensemble Aurora. And the playing of the other works is every bit as persuasive in its lightness and flexibility. www.tinyurl.com/6mchwb  MICHAEL DERVAN

BACH
Hélène Grimaud (piano), Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen Deutsche Grammophon 477 7978***
This is one of those discs that is all Bach but not just Bach. French pianist Hélène Grimaud juxtaposes arrangements of Bach by Busoni, Liszt and Rachmaninov with pieces as the great man himself left them, preludes and fugues from the Well-Tempered Clavierand the Concerto in D minor, BWV1052. The approach is unapologetically pianistic, tender and thrusting by turn, and not in the least shy of long-scale, carefully-graded swells, or the grunting power of a modern concert grand in its nether regions. Nor is Grimaud shy about dominating the sound picture in the D minor Concerto. The commanding playing on this often spirited disc is of the kind that may well induce a shudder or two in purer purists. www.tinyurl.com/5b9s4r  MICHAEL DERVAN

MOZART: MASONIC MUSIC
Heo Young-Hoon (tenor), Kassel Spohr Chamber Orchestra/ Roberto Paternostro Naxos 8.570897***
One of the best-known of musical compliments was paid by Haydn to Mozart's father: "Before God and as an honest man," he said, "I tell you that your son is the greatest composer known to me either in person or by name." Less well known is that the occasion of the meeting was a celebration of Haydn's having, like Mozart, become a Freemason. This new Naxos disc brings together Mozart's music with masonic connections, from the well-known and first-rate ( Masonic Funeral Musicand Adagio and Fugue in C minor) to lesser- known cantatas and songs. The orchestral playing under Robert Paternostro is bracing, though tenor Heo Young-Hoon, who takes the bulk of the vocal work, is not the best of the singers involved. www.naxosdirect.ie  MICHAEL DERVAN

LIGETI: LUX AETERNA; VIOLA SONATA (EXC); PHANTASIEN NACH FRIEDRICH HÖLDERLIN; HEPPENER: IM GESTEIN
Susanne van Els (viola), Cappella Amsterdam, musikFabrik/Daniel Reuss Harmonia Mundi HMC 901985****
Ligeti's choral work Lux aeterna, made famous in Stanley Kubrick's film 2001: A Space Odyssey, is a slow blur but an extraordinarily gripping one. By contrast, his three Hölderlin settings of 1982 wind themselves up almost beyond breaking point. Cappella Amsterdam's fearless performances of the two works are interleaved with three movements from the Viola Sonata from the early 1990s, which range from the ruminative to the frenzied. The coupling is a 1992 Celan setting by the octogenarian Dutch composer Robert Heppener. The moody Im Gestein, for choir and ensemble of solo strings and percussion, is altogether more conventional in aim and reach than the Ligeti. www.tinyurl.com/6mchwb  MICHAEL DERVAN