All the drama of Weill

The dynamic Marin Alsop has proved that women can wield batons every bit as well as the male of the species, with her award-winning Naxos recordings as prime evidence.

The American conductor has been working through the Bs (Barber, Bernstein and Brahms) and now leaps to the other end of the alphabet for Kurt Weill's two symphonies.

It's a long road from the German's First Symphony (1920) to songs such as Mack the Knife, although Weill considered dedicating his orchestral work to fellow-workers, peasants and soldiers. Musically, it's not so far from scaled-down Mahler or early Schoenberg, and Alsop invites such comparisons in this gripping performance from her Bournemouth Symphony.

Weill's Second Symphony, written in 1934, shows a composer seasoned in music theatre. The three movements exude drama and character and, if Weill borrows a few riffs from his Seven Deadly Sins, so be it.

The theatrical elements spur Alsop on. The orchestra does wonders, turning on dimes in tricky rhythmic corners, working up some huge climaxes, and offering solo turns to cherish.

The album is completed by a curiosity, Robert Russell Bennett's rather fruity symphonic nocturne arranged from Lady in the Dark. And, as if you ever doubted it, Alsop is as much at home on Broadway as in the hallowed concert hall.

Also on Naxos, Benjamin Pasternack tackles the piano music of his countryman Aaron Copland.

Copland's Piano Fantasy is a one-movement work from 1957 yet still allows Appalachian echoes into its fairly severe environs.

Pasternack emerges from its potential finger-tangle unscathed and resilient, especially in the jazzy antics of the Scherzo.

Copland's Piano Sonata, written just after his popular ballets Billy the Kid and Rodeo, has the same meld of dissonance and consonance that Shostakovich knew so well.

Pasternack runs the gamut in light and shade, caught to the slightest flicker in a Toronto studio.

And who could resist the aggro-brilliance of the 1930 Piano Variations, a piece that Leonard Bernstein once said was always guaranteed to empty a party.

Copland doesn't flinch at the brusque and brutal, but he is not averse to a touch of boogie either and Pasternack is on the ball with all three.

* Weill, Symphonies 1 and 2 (Naxos 8.557481); Copland, Piano Works (Naxos 8.559184)