These are stormy, full-blooded performances of Schumann. The young Norwegian trio gives the D minor all the dark urgency of a late Brahms work. In the sunnier, beautifully shaped F major, it is again unafraid to push its expressiveness to the limits. One slight disappointment was the magical moment in the first movement when the cello plays a pianissimo melody and is then joined by the violin, as at a distance, here spoiled by Sølve Sigerland’s querulously wide vibrato. Compared with a classic recording, such as the Thibaud-Cortot-Casals, the tempi are swift.

Bruno Walter is a conductor who knew how to stamp the works he conducted and recorded, especially those from the religious repertory, with the seal of his warm poetic sensitivity and his radiant humanity. Through these scores, he manages to communicate his vision to us, and, without ever forcing an already strong text, without false sentiment or gratuitous effect, he leaves us room for a more personal interpretation of the music. Brahms composed his Requiem at the beginning of his career, at under thirty-five- the age at which Mozart died (this means that both composers wrote their Requiems at about the same age).

Shostakovich's introspective Piano Quintet is one of the composer's supreme achievements. Perhaps it was the subtle nod to Baroque forms as well as the Beethoven-like use of fugue that earned this piece a permanent place in the chamber repertoire. The Nash Ensemble, led by Marcia Crayford and Elizabeth Clayton, shines especially in the playful and colorful Scherzo.

Orlande Lassus (here called Orlando di Lasso) would be at the top of the pop charts in the latter half of the seventeenth century if such records had been kept; there was a certain time when some of Lassus' tunes were known to average European citizens as well as a Beatles song might be familiar to the ordinary listener in the early twenty first century. In Capriccio's Orlando di Lasso: German Songs expert period band Lautten Compagney, with the help of singers Mona Spågele, Bernhard Landauer, Wilfried Jochens, and Thomas Herberich attempt to put over a program of what Lassus' popularly oriented German lieder may have sounded like in their time.

Franz Liszt and Olivier Messiaen don't usually spring to mind as similar figures, let alone as an expected pairing for an album, since the former was the arch-Romantic virtuoso pianist and tone poet, while the latter was an influential modernist composer and organist. Yet both men were devout Roman Catholic musicians with mystical ideas that found expression in their works. To be sure, this disc by pianist Fredrik Ullén illustrates the differences between them by presenting their solo piano pieces in alternation, so the listener is never lulled by one style or the other but stays attentive throughout the program.