Any album titled "East Meets West" may raise suspicions of crossover commercialism, and purists may reject this disc as a contrived hybrid of classical and international genres. But violinist Daniel Hope presents a program that is much more than a superficial exercise in multiculturalism, and his selections reveal the exotic impulses that touched many composers in the twentieth century. While Ravi Shankar's Raga Piloo and Swara-Kakali overtly reach westward, particularly in the employment of a violin with the Indian sitar, tabla, and tanpura, Ravel's Tzigane, de Falla's Suite populaire espagnol, and Bartók's Romanian Folk Dances are more dispersed in their regional influences and certainly suggest no connections with Asia.

By combining the 120 extant measures of Mozart's unfinished Concerto in D major for violin and piano, K. App. 56 (K. 315f) with the Sonata in D major for piano and violin, K. 306, composer Philip Wilby has fashioned a performing version that seems reasonably backed by musical evidence, competent in orchestration, and perhaps ingenious enough to meet the approval of some Mozartians. Unfortunately for listeners seeking a major revelation, this reconstruction is short on the felicitous surprises and touching expressions one might find in a fully conceived work by Mozart, and seems a bit ordinary in substance and artificial in development.

Limited 96 CD set. Conductor, pianist, composer and media personality, André Previn excelled in a diversity of musical genres and idioms. A child prodigy in his native Berlin, he moved to the USA in 1939 and made his early career in Hollywood, winning four Academy Awards. His time as Principal Conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra (1968-1979) established him as a major interpreter of symphonic repertoire, particularly Russian, French and British music - "The very definition of good conducting," wrote Gramophone of his celebrated LSO version of Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker.