Roaring Eisler. Ensemble Modern/HK Gruber (RCA)

What a combination! HK Gruber, gravel-voiced Viennese chansonnier (and composer) extraordinaire in the tart, anti-bourgeois songs of one of Germany's most politically committed composers, Hanns Eisler (1898-1962). Forget all the other recent attempts you may have heard to resuscitate the spirit of Eisler's rousing 1930s ballads, many with texts by Brecht. Gruber distils their acid and venom like no one else, making himself sound as integral to this music as Lotte Lenya could to the similar undertakings of Kurt Weill. Also on the disc are four of the suites Eisler arranged from his film music in small jazz band scorings, here delivered with stylish incisiveness by the admirable Ensemble Modern under the penetrating Gruber. Michael Dervan

Telemann: Overture in C; Concerto in A ; Overture in F. New London Consort/Philip Pickett (Decca)

The fact that Telemann was among the most prolific of composers has tended to obscure the high quality of the best of his music. Philip Pickett's new collection brings together pieces with watery connections, a Water Music overture and Alster overture, both composed for public occasions in Hamburg, and a concerto nicknamed The Frogs. The Water Music (like Bach's overtures, a suite) is particularly fine, its dance movements rich in memorable turns and unusual instrumental effects. Pictorialism abounds in the other works, too, where the playing is lithe, the cut and thrust lively. Taking his cue from the 18th-century composer and theorist Mattheson, Pickett adopts some very stately tempos in the Water Music which, authentic or no, seemed to me to deprive the music of some of its vitality. Michael Dervan

The Klemperer Legacy: live recordings (EMI)

There were many strands in the long career of Otto Klemperer (1885-1973) - adventurous years with Berlin's Kroll Opera in the 1920s, a Nazi-induced hiatus in Los Angeles, and post-war rehabilitation in London as a grand old man whose Beethoven was slower than anyone else's. Klemperer's recording fame rests on the London activity of his later years, so it's of great interest that EMI have issued four CDs from 1960s concerts with the Bavarian Radio SO in Munich. Here, for instance, is the rewritten coda of the finale of Mendelssohn's Scottish Symphony that he preferred for concert use (not to be found in his studio recording), and a Schubert Unfinished that pleased this most rarely satisfied of men. Bruckner's Fourth, Mahler's Second and Beethoven's Fourth and Fifth feature in typically granitic readings.

Michael Dervan