Bernstein: The Age of Anxiety; Piano Concerto. Marc-Andre Hamelin, UO/Dmitry Sitkovetsky (Hyperion)

There's an 1878 Punch cartoon which prefigured the development of radio. The lady of the house stands in front of a chimney-breast-sized console with taps like miniature submarine hatches, issuing strict instructions for one musical source to be turned off before the next is let in. It's not a caution either Leonard Bernstein or William Bolcom chose to pay much attention to. You could call Bolcom's 1976 all-in Piano Concerto post-Ivesian, but that would be to do a disservice to Ives. Bernstein's Auden-inspired Age of Anxiety of 1949 is a symphony for piano and orchestra in a style of programmatic kitsch. MarcAndre Hamelin dispatches both with his customary elan, and Hyperion's recording presents the Ulster Orchestra under Dmitry Sitkovetsky in vivid, artificially close focus.

Scriabin/Nemtin: Preparation for the Final Mystery. Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin/Vladimir Ashkenazy (Decca, 3 CDs)

Distance in time seems no barrier to those industrious souls who embark on completions or performing versions of works unfinished by greater men. The surviving material doesn't even need to amount to a torso or a skeleton: 53 pages of sketches provided the musical core from which Russian composer Alexander Nemtin generated the 159 minutes of the introduction - Preparation - for the week-long Mysterium that was to have been the mystically-inclined Scriabin's magnum opus. Nemtin certainly manages to imbue his creation with Scriabin-esque atmosphere, but even in Ashkenazy's experienced hands, the music rarely stirs or flashes like the real thing. An elaborate curiosity for completists, ardent Scriabinists and Nemtinites.

Clara Schumann: Piano and Chamber Music. Sreten Krstic (violin), Stephan Haack (cello), Micaela Gelius (piano) (Arte Nova)

A woman, the 20-year-old Clara Schumann confided to her diary in 1839, "must not compose . . . it would be arrogance". Yet she had begun composing as a child and continued the pursuit for another 14 years. For the rest of her long life, until 1896, she was known as a great virtuoso pianist, promoting the works of her husband, Robert, and also Chopin, and Brahms. This new collection includes the Piano Trio, the Romances for violin and piano, the Variations, Op. 20, and some shorter piano pieces. It has become the fashion to praise her as an unjustly neglected woman composer, and there's a breadth in the trio which clearly suggests why. Elsewhere, though, the substance is slight, only the family name guaranteeing current attention.