Maria João Pires' absence in recent years is partly explained by this new two-disc set's dedication to the cardiac unit of Salamanca University Hospital. As great as Pires has been in the past, she's even better now: Each phrase has astonishing authority, each note rings out with a combination of force and radiance and, in a throwback to 19th-century pianist, chords are "broken" (each note sounded individually) with an eloquence beyond that of Vladimir Horowitz. The only disappointment in this late-Chopin program is the Cello Sonata Op. 65: Pavel Gomziakov seems to lack the empathy to bring it off.

- David Patrick Stearns

Unsuk Chin
Violin Concerto
Viviane Hagner, violin; Montreal Symphony Orchestra, Kent Nagano conducting
(Analekta, ****)

Korean composer Unsuk Chin came to the attention of many in the American classical music community when, seemingly out of the blue, she won the Grawemeyer Award. But catching up with this 47-year-old composer isn't easy. Though her Alice in Wonderland opera is out on DVD, it makes a curious, even tedious impression. The first piece on this disc, the 2008 Rocana, is dense and trying. Then you enter the almost indescribable heaven that is her 2001 Violin Concerto, which takes up most of this disc.

Though it vaguely follows the exterior contour of a four-movement concert work, it's something of a neo-impressionist journey in sound (imagine Kaija Saariaho without electronics) that both hangs together and is more uncompromising than distant ancestors such as Debussy and Ravel. The piece is so much itself, so complete in the world it inhabits, that you can't really call it modern or retro, Eastern-influenced or not. It's one of the great CDs of the year - thanks also to the intensely committed performance by violinist Viviane Hagner and the Montreal orchestra under Kent Nagano.

- D.P.S.