Even people who care nothing for opera will be won over by the graceful performances of popular Neapolitan songs on this disk. Many of the tunes, from the title O Sole Mio to Funiculi Funicula, are part of even non-Italian-descent American culture, and they are all sung with an easy grace and charm and gusto. It is easy to forget (!!) that Pavarotti is an international opera star when listening to this disk; he sounds so natural it's almost as if a good friend (who happens to have a magnificent voice) were entertaining you after a few glasses of chianti. By comparison, Mario Lanza's renditions of these songs sound artificial and mannered. The orchestrations are excellent, too. Pointed, lively, and well balanced with the soloist. This is an album recorded in Pavarotti's prime, in the 1970's, before he became one of "The Three Tenors."

The Humoreske Op.20 is an incredible cycle, and another of those piece which hides remarkable musical power behind an innocent sounding title. Lupu shows the Harlequin mask slipping, and has a way of emphasising grotesque elements in the music. Where there is lyricism this sings, but Schumann never really allows it to flow in any predictable direction and Lupu responds to every unconventional aberration with glee. The Kinderszenen are somewhat safer musical ground, and Lupu’s sensitivity to Schumann’s idiom means just enough but not too much teasing and stretching of the ends of phrases. Each of the little sketches and character moods are given enough value and weight, with the poise of the central Dreaming very much an eye at the centre of the rest of the pieces, all of which whirl and orbit with their own sense of vibrant life. Kreisleriana has aspects of the ultimate virtuoso showpiece, and Radu Lupu skates through its difficulties with effortless ease and a sense of nobility which reaches to the heart of the music.

The Scherzos are played with elegant refinement, but the Moments musicaux D780 are in a different league creatively. Lupu’s exploration of subtle mood in these six pieces is hard to equal. The likes of that A flat major Andantino have timeless qualities you will always want to have around, and the same goes for the lighter pieces, which have an irrepressible inner life and forward-looking and uplifting sense of atmosphere. This CD concludes with the stunning Sonata D958 which Lupu delivers with all of those qualities one would expect and hope for. The depth of expression he can achieve with so few notes in the Andantino is another world-stopping musical experience.

Lupu is a keyboard poet, and Schubert's lyrical gems seem as though they were written for his interpretive artistry. He sings the gorgeous melodies with limpid, beautiful tone. The intimacy Lupu achieves in the G-flat impromptu sounds almost personal, an effect heightened by the transparent engineering. There's a luminosity to Lupu's traversal of these remarkable works that's irresistible; his pianism alternates subtle lights and shades. While the playing is elegant and refined, he doesn't stint on the dramatic contrasts in the music, nor does he neglect the dark poetry that pulls it into deeper regions. There are many fine versions of these classics; Lupu's stands with the best. –Dan Davis

'A lyricist in a thousand', Lupu has, naturally, placed Schubert at the centre of his repertoire and conjured from a seemingly recalcitrant black-and-white instrument a range of vocal colours and nuances that even a Souzay or Fischer-Dieskau might envy. Heard at his greatest in the sombre A minor Sonata, D845, he recreates a place where even the most outwardly genial phrase is troubled and despairing. Then turn to the A major Sonata's finale (D664) and you hear a pianist who can change from blazing defiance to a delectable lightness and vivacity. In the shorter, less familiar sonatas, too, Lupu makes you aware of Schubert's tirelessly fecund imagination, of his experimenting with ideas and procedures far ahead of his time.

In Brahms's Op 117-19, music like 'the golden lustre of parks in autumn, and the austere black and white of winter walks' (William Ritter), Lupu draws you into his confidence as only he can. The halting progressions of Op 119 No 2 (something Rachmaninov later remembered in his F major Prelude, Op 32 No 7) is perfectly qualified by its rapturous middle section and throughout all these pieces Lupu draws you into a crepuscular world of such poetic resource that you finally emerge blinking into the often banal reality of everyday life.

Yuja Wang joins the legendary maestro on her first orchestral album. To the challenging Rachmaninov Piano Concerto no. 2, she adds the daunting Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini. Yuja Wang and Claudio Abbado kindle the Mahler Chamber Orchestra into blazes of beauty. Yuja Wang, Gramophone's "Young Artist of the Year" 2009, hearkens to the no-holds-barred pianistic sensations of the 19th century "Whereas many pianists try to dominate this set of variations, she worked with it. This approach simply gave more punch to the places in which the piano should jump out of the texture".

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