With all the chatter about the death of the compact disc, anxiety in the recording industry and the domination of downloads, the flood of CDs overflowing my mailbox never seems to recede. Need a new Bruckner 4th, an Adès anthology or piano music by Pärt? How about Azerbaijani concertos, Schubert sonatas or a new Midsummer Night's Dream? Those were among the two dozen or so discs I unwrapped just last week. How to choose? For this visit to weekend All Things Considered, I went for something old (stunning albums of nearly 300-year-old music by Bach and Vivaldi), something new (Toshio Hosokawa's atmospheric adventures for the Japanese sho) and something guaranteed to blow away the winter blahhs (Michael Torke's infectious Fiji). Fear not. Classical CDs are here to stay for a while. These four (below) are just a few of the finest.
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