NEW YORK, NY.- ‘Mendelssohn’

Isata Kanneh-Mason, piano; London Mozart Players; Jonathan Bloxham, conductor (Decca)

Pianist Isata Kanneh-Mason has the happy habit of making musically enjoyable albums that are also uncommonly well thought through. Her first solo release for Decca was an important survey of the works of Clara Schumann; her second, “Summertime,” took in Samuel Coleridge-Taylor and Amy Beach, as well as George Gershwin and Samuel Barber; a third, “Childhood Tales,” featured a rare account of Ernst von Dohnanyi’s “Variations on a Nursery Song.” Each was solidly played, and each made for fulfilling listening.

Much the same is true of Kanneh-Mason’s new recording of music by the Mendelssohn siblings, Felix and Fanny. Could there be more pizazz in the outer movements of Felix’s first concerto, a work that Fanny once played in public? More fairy dust to her rather plodding account of Rachmaninoff’s transcription of the Scherzo from “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”? Surely there could. But Kanneh-Mason is a pianist of poise and patience, of good sense and not facile show. It’s hard not to admire the simple eloquence of her phrasing in Moszkowski’s reworking of the Nocturne from “Midsummer,” or the careful subtlety that she brings to Fanny’s shadowy “Notturno” and her bold “Easter Sonata,” with its poignant slow movement. Another fine release from this pianist. — DAVID ALLEN

‘The Kurt Weill Album’

Konzerthausorchester Berlin; Joana Mallwitz, conductor (Deutsche Grammophon)

Kurt Weill’s early music, with its Berliner brightness and swagger, may not sound like Mozart, but it has Mozart’s delicacy. The works that Weill wrote in his European years, before emigrating to the United States in 1935, are so precisely orchestrated and so deceptively simple, they leave no room for imperfection. Too often, though, they are performed with a barbed cabaret affect that verges on Weimar-era kitsch.

Not so on “The Kurt Weill Album,” conductor Joana Mallwitz’s Deutsche Grammophon debut, with cover art that understandably could be mistaken for a prop from “Tár.” Unlike the fictional Lydia Tár, however, Mallwitz is the real deal: She leads the Konzerthausorchester Berlin here with teeming vitality and brilliantly rendered detail.

Mallwitz’s account of the First Symphony, which rivals Kirill Petrenko’s recent performances with the Berlin Philharmonic, is episodic yet cohesive, leaning into late-Romantic eruptions that wouldn’t be out of place in “Wozzeck.” The Second Symphony is vastly different, more tuneful and direct, but no less dramatic, almost like a collage of operatic interludes. In “The Seven Deadly Sins,” she is joined by singer Katharine Mehrling, a Berlin authority on Weill’s music in her collaborations with director Barrie Kosky at the Komische Oper. Together, they are clear, deadpan and absolutely, persuasively of Weill’s sound world. — JOSHUA BARONE

‘Juilliard String Quartet Plays Arnold Schoenberg’

Juilliard String Quartet (Sony)

The Juilliard Quartet’s 1975 recording of the complete Schoenberg string quartets was accompanied by an interview with their producer, Steven Epstein. When Epstein remarked to the first violinist, Robert Mann, that he had now become one of the few musicians to record these works twice, Mann replied, “I’ve lived too long!” He was joking, of course, but his words — even now, 150 years after Schoenberg’s birth — reflect a dogged attitude toward this composer’s music: something to be gotten through, perhaps admired, but rarely loved or enjoyed.

Those recordings make their first CD appearance in this seven-disc set of the Juilliard’s complete explorations of Schoenberg. They create an intriguing contrast with the Juilliard’s first version, from the 1950s. In the intervening quarter-century, the approach has become less driven and linear, the sound more spacious and dimensional. The last two movements of the Second Quartet — settings of Stefan George poems, with the incomparable soprano Benita Valente — have rarely sounded so intoxicating, and even in the serial syntax of the Third and Fourth Quartets one can hear bouncing, jovial rhythms.

Filling out the set are two renditions of the String Trio; the delightfully odd “Ode to Napoleon Buonaparte,” with Glenn Gould at the piano; and a radiant 1991 account of the sextet version of “Verklärte Nacht,” in which the quartet is joined by violist Walter Trampler and cellist Yo-Yo Ma. — DAVID WEININGER

‘Aigul’

Aigul Akhmetshina, mezzo-soprano; Apollo Voices; Royal Philharmonic Orchestra; Daniele Rustioni, conductor (Decca)

Last season, mezzo-soprano Aigul Akhmetshina, the youngest singer ever to portray Carmen at the Metropolitan Opera, saved a new, borderline unwatchable production of Bizet’s opera. On her debut solo album, her voice’s sly magnetism and splendid finish move to the foreground.

With its sculpted sumptuousness and serpentine flow, Akhmetshina’s subtly vocalized Carmen tantalizes and gives nothing away. Her Habanera, full of will-she-won’t-she misdirection, avoids overblown displays of sensuality, and the “Seguidilla” is so intensely suggestive that you forget it’s a simple story about getting a drink at a bar. But then Akhmetshina snuffs out the gaiety of the card trio with an opaque voice of dread and premonition.

Arias from “Werther” and “I Capuleti e i Montecchi” lack that lived-in quality and risk turning leaden. Counterintuitively, for a voice of such plushness, Akhmetshina shines in the technical wizardry that Rossini requires. The finale of “La Cenerentola” begins with the exultant annunciation of “Nacqui all’affanno,” her voice thick, agile and vivid, before pivoting to fluttery turns and double-octave descents. Akhmetshina’s “Il Barbiere di Siviglia” is all low-voiced allure until she unsheathes surprisingly acute staccatos.

Daniele Rustioni conducts the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in tight, fluid performances, and Apollo Voices are a sprightly choral contingent. On the final track, Akhmetshina’s timbre drips with nostalgia in a full-throated rendition of “The Nightingale,” a traditional song from her native Bashkortostan in Russia. Richly impassioned, her voice speaks for itself. — OUSSAMA ZAHR

‘Paul Hindemith — Alfred Schnittke’

Anna Gourari, piano; Orchestra della Svizzera Italiana; Markus Poschner, conductor (ECM)

The two composers whom pianist Anna Gourari brings together in her latest offering seem to create a diametrically opposed pair: Schnittke, the collagist of wild eclecticism, and Hindemith, his era’s master of orderly, workaday counterpoint. If Gourari hadn’t used the phrase “Elusive Affinity” as the title of her previous ECM recording, it would work just as well here.

Listening to these excellent performances of Schnittke and Hindemith’s works for piano and strings, though, connections began to present themselves. In Schnittke’s Concerto for Piano and String Orchestra, one initially hears the pastiche of disparate styles for which he was both renowned and reviled. But below the surface lurk repeated motifs, chorales, even tone clusters being transformed in a way that suggests a deeper logic to the music’s unfolding. Even a twisted reference to jazz seems in keeping with a grasping for order amid the maelstrom. Conversely, Hindemith’s score for the ballet “The Four Temperaments” has a surprisingly expressive range despite the strict variation form that undergirds it. No temperament plays to type, and the finale certainly sounds far less “choleric” than the title would suggest.

The cohesive impression is aided mightily by Gourari’s sensitive yet exacting performances, and by the conductor Markus Poschner’s sympathetic accompaniment. He and the Orchestra della Svizzera Italiana also bring a welcome lightness of touch to Hindemith’s “Mathis der Maler” Symphony. — DAVID WEININGER

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.