Ravel: Piano Concertos; Valses nobles et sentimentales. Krystian Zimerman, Cleveland Orchestra, LSO/Pierre Boulez (DG)

Ravel was extremely demanding of performers. The soprano Madeleine Gray, one of his favourite interpreters, recalled that, having turned up with Poulenc to perform for his comments, all he did was point to a bar "where I had made a slight rallentando that was not in the score". Boulez and Zimerman are musicians obviously ready to play by the composer's tight rules. At the same time they relish the fresh sonorities he delighted in inventing, and capture the sophisticated joie de vivre that imbues so much of this disc. A treat.

By Michael Dervan

Kozeluch: 3 Symphonies. London Mozart Players / Matthias Bamert (Chandos) Kozeluch: Wind Music. Consortium Classicum (Orfeo)

In his own time, the Bohemian composer Leopold Kozeluch (1747-1818) was an important figure, influential in the ascent of the piano at the expense of the harpsichord, well-enough set up in Vienna to refuse the invitation to succeed Mozart as court organist in Salzburg, and, from 1784, proprietor of his own publishing house. Music with a breezy amiability seems to have come easily to him. His handling of gesture is clear and strong - especially in the turbulent G minor Symphony. What the pieces lack, even under the strongly marshalled direction of Matthias Bamert, is the tonal tension of a Haydn or Mozart, two men the competitive Kozeluch liked to belittle. The wind music is excellent of its kind and the playing of Consortium Classicum matches it in polish and finesse.

By Michael Dervan

Richard Strauss: "Salome" (Chandos)

Strauss's merciless study of obsession is given a glittering new lease of life on this fine recording, with the brilliant young Danish soprano Inga Nielsen spinning vocal threads of the finest silver in one of the most demanding roles in the soprano repertoire. Rarely, if ever, can Salome have sounded so damn young - Nielsen presents a quivering teenage heroine caught in a web of political and sexual intrigue, and if death is the only escape, her death, when it comes, is a business of shattering horror. Reiner Goldberg and Anja Silja as Herod and Herodias, Robert Hale as Jokanaan and Deon van der Walt as Narraboth complete a formidable cast, and the Danish National Radio Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Michael Schonwandt, plays a storm.

By Arminta Wallace