Cello Love.(Sound recording review)

The violin has more glamour, the viola more soul, the bass more thundering power. But the cello remains the most versatile member of the string family, and there could hardly be a more inviting introduction to its charms than "My Tunes" (Sony Classical), a new disk by the German cellist Jan Vogler. Vogler's intense and febrile sound is restrained by classical discipline and enriched by a searching musical intelligence. His accounts of short works by such disparate composers as Bach, Tchaikovsky, Elgar ("Salut d'Amour"), and Henry Mancini ("Moon River") are brisk, eloquent, and immaculately detailed.

Ned Rorem has been a lyrical presence in American music for more than half a century, but rarely with such power as in the Cello Concerto (2002), part of a new disk by the conductor Jose Serebrier and the Royal Scottish National Orchestra (Naxos). Deftly scored for a pared-down chamber orchestra, it is the finest of Rorem's many concertos, consistently inventive and shot through with piercing melancholy. The somewhat self-effacing soloist, Wen-Sinn Yang, is buoyed by the suave ...