On track: From jungle rhythms to razzle-dazzle piano

If Harlem had had a symphony orchestra in 1923, then Milhaud's La Creation du Monde would have been top of its bill.

Creation is first up on a tantalising Naxos disc of the French composer's music, stylishly delivered by the Orchestre National de Lille under Jean-Claude Casadeus.
It is one of three ballets on the CD and, once you have swayed to its soignee jungle rhythms, snapped fingers through the jazz fugue and counted the many hints of Gershwin to come, you can languish in the Brazilian ambience of Le Boeuf sur le Toit.

And there's still L'Homme et son desir to come, with (literally) whip-cracking percussion and cool passages for a trio of wordless singers - think Lambert Hendricks and Ross on a neo-classical trip.

There's a similar joie de vivre in a new Hyperion disc featuring pianist Angela Hewitt with the Australian Chamber Orchestra playing Bach concertos.

Modern instruments certainly add more weight to the step of the D minor Allegro while its Adagio yearns appealingly, even if string unisons are untidy.

The Fifth Brandenburg is a revelation. Its piano cadenza glistens like a Liszt transcription while the trio of flute, violin and piano make the Affetuoso live up to Bach's directive.

If you can cope with a tinge of guilt listening to Bach played on a Fazioli grand, then why not go the whole hog with Volume 37 of Hyperion's Romantic Piano Concerto series?

Hear how Eduard Napravnik and Felix Blumenfeld provide the missing links between Grieg, Schumann and Richard Adinsell's Warsaw Concerto.

Pianist Evgeny Soifertis has all the razzle-dazzle for music that sounds like Saint-Saens on ripple overdrive with borsch on the side, while Alexander Titov and the BBC Scottish Symphony prove they can crescendo on a semiquaver and play village band orchestrations without a smirk.

The final track is a treasure, Napravnik's barnstorming Fantasie Russe which sets off stomping through The Volga Boatmen and ends in cymbal-crashing circus music that, in just a few decades, would be served up by Stravinsky and Shostakovich with spicier seasonings.

* Milhaud, Le Creation du Monde (Naxos 8.557287)

Bach, The Keyboard Concertos I (Hyperion CDA 67307, through Ode Records)

The Romantic Piano Concerto Volume 37 (Hyperion CDA 67511, through Ode Records)