The latest CD releases reviewed

BARTÓK: STRING QUARTETS
Belcea Quartet EMI Classics 394 4002 (2 CDs) ***

The Belcea Quartet, now on disc with a new cellist (Antoine Lederlin replacing Alasdair Tait), remain an ensemble that like to explore extremes. In this new recording of the six quartets of Béla Bartók,

the single most highly regarded body of quartets the 20th century produced, the Belceas take very much a 21st-century approach, lavishing all the qualities of melt and dissolve, of colouring and shading, that string players have acquired in dealing with more recent repertoire. The effect is tonally ravishing in ways the composer is unlikely ever to have imagined, though, paradoxically, for all its extraordinary finesse, the outcome is sometimes what you would have to call Bartók-lite. www.emiclassics.com

DEANE: RIPIENO; VIOLIN CONCERTO; SAMARA
RTÉ NSO/Gerhard Markson RTÉ CD 274 ****

Raymond Deane's Ripieno (1998-99) revisits old-style Schoenbergian expressionism (think of the Five Orchestral Pieces) with a strong overlay of Grand Guignol. The overall effect is nervy and edgy. The Violin Concerto (2002-3) looks even further back, to the mannerisms of 19th-century virtuosity - Christine Pryn handles the cadenzas with aplomb - and, briefly, to the world of Schubert's Winterrreise. It remains rooted in the present, however, not only through Deane's typically combative writing, but also through some milder, almost new-age reflections. This strongly performed and sonorously recorded disc ends with Samara (2005), which although not without explosive moments, is calmer and strangely haunting, bringing to mind aspects of the composer's style of 30 years ago. www.rte.ie/shop

LEROY ANDERSON: ORCHESTRAL MUSIC 1
Jeffrey Biegel (piano), BBC Concert Orchestra/Leonard Slatkin Naxos American Classics 8.559313 ***

This disc launches a complete survey of the orchestral work of the American tunesmith Leroy Anderson (1908-75). Anderson had a long association with the Boston Pops Orchestra and wrote some of the cleverest, wittiest and most popular light classical music of the 20th century (his Blue Tango spent 15 weeks at the top of the hit parade in 1952). You may not know all the titles - Fiddle-Faddle, Belle of the Ball, Bugler's Holiday, Clarinet Candy - but you'll no doubt recognise many of the tunes. The writing in Anderson's one large-scale piece, the Piano Concerto of 1953, sounds more derivative than original. This new collection by longtime Anderson advocate Leonard Slatkin is not as stylish or polished as the one he made for RCA in the mid 1990s. www.naxos.com