This is a truly fascinating recording, and it is fascinating 23 times. Gloria Cheng has put together a series of 20th-century dance-linked piano miniatures which repeatedly surprises and delights. If you go in for playing "spot the tune" with your friends, this should keep you going for months, with everything from a Paul Hindemith shimmy to a Philip Glass waltz. It is an area of repertory that ...
Perhaps I should start by admitting a bias: Many years ago, lying on Boston's grassy Esplanade by the Charles River on warm summer nights, I learned what a symphony orchestra should sound like, with Arthur Fiedler conducting the Boston Pops Orchestra. Those concerts were free; these seven compact discs are not--not quite. But for any lover of light classical music, they are certainly one of the ...