Looking at the selection of pieces on Playful Clarinet, one expects to hear a lot of lighthearted music played with a sense of whimsy, some indulgence, and fun. Clarinetist Ludmila Peterková doesn't quite manage to deliver, however. She's a very skillful player, with excellent intonation, but she's not yet in the same league with the likes of Sabine Meyer or Richard Stoltzman. In the quieter, softer moments of pieces like the Bach Air on the G String and La fille aux chevaux de lin, she has a wonderfully lyrical, warm tone. In other places, especially loud, high notes, her tone isn't nearly as likeable.

Haydn’s three authentic violin concertos fit ideally on a single disc and are an integral part of every aspiring fiddler’s arsenal. It’s easy to see why: even if they don’t display the virtuosity or depth of feeling of Mozart’s five, they nevertheless have challenges of their own, framed in music of effortless charm and Haydn’s own brand of earthy melodiousness. Lisa Jacobs fields a band of no more than 14 string players, with a very present harpsichord accompaniment. Ensemble and phrasing are ideal, and Jacobs’s own cadenzas are in keeping with their surroundings. Her tone is clear and consistent.

The best Summer anthology from a dance perspective. This gives the full view of Summer's best tunes the way they were played in the clubs; all the added loops, orchestrations, and extra production, plus her voice mixed to its fullest and even boosted. It covers 73 minutes, which is more than anyone except the disco junkies would ever need, and even has an extra cut on the cassette, rather than on the CD.

With a little delay following the issue of a complete set of violin works, Supraphon came with the sequel to that title in the "hommage a Zdenek Fibich" series, presenting a new recording of the complete quartet output of this Czech neo- Romantic composer who has so far failed to get all the interest he would rightfully deserve. The considerable creative challenge involved in this project was taken up here by the experienced Panocha Quartet, which was once again, after its account of Dvofak's early quartets, offered a golden opportunity to place its high artistic repute in the service of asserting music which may lie on the margins of the mainstream repertoire, yet whose values are thoroughly unmistakeable.

If you like your Shostakovich quartets big, brawny, and a bit brutal, you'll like the Emerson Quartet's Shostakovich quartets. The Allegros are muscular, with sharp attacks, strong sforzandos, and relentless rhythms. The Passacaglias are powerful, with massive sonorities, monumental structures, and inexorable tempos. And the Allegrettos are aggressive, with ironic accents, sarcastic tones, and mordent tempos.

Alison Krauss & Union Station continue their winning streak on the aptly titled Lonely Runs Both Ways. While they have in some part grown away from their earthy, rollicking bluegrass roots, they've been able to craft a really polished and honest-sounding brand of mid-American adult contemporary that never dips into the schlockiness of mainstream AC or the formula-driven sound of young country. Instead, Krauss, co-songwriter Dan Tyminski, and the Station dig deep into the classic themes of rural American music, polishing them with terrific production, the finest instrumentation, and two of the best voices around.

MCA Special Products' Sings Songs of Love contains ten highlights from Patty Loveless' popular late-'80s recordings for MCA. There are enough hits here to qualify the disc as a quasi-greatest-hits collection – "Timber, I'm Falling in Love," "After All," "Lonely Days, Lonely Nights," "Blue Side of Town," "Wicked Ways," "I Did," "You Saved Me," "Can't Stop Myself from Loving You," and "The Lonely Side of Love" all charted – but the disc falls short of being definitive. Nevertheless, it's a very effective, very entertaining sampler that's more than worth its budget price.

It was inevitable, especially considering her recent albums, that Dolly Parton would eventually go all the way back to the mountains with a bluegrass project. A child of the southern Appalachians, Parton would have absorbed this music straight through her skin during her formative years. And, indeed, her performance on this CD is impeccable, as is her choice of material. Producer Steve Buckingham has taken care to bring together a group of accomplished bluegrassers to accompany Parton. Alison Krauss, Stuart Duncan, Dan Tyminski, Jerry Douglas, Rhonda Vincent, and Bryan Sutton are major contributors, as is Patty Loveless.

Since Varese's 18-track 1995 collection The Best of Donna Fargo has gone out of print, MCA's 20th Century Masters from 2002 stands as the best collection of her classic Dot material currently on the market. At 11 tracks, it's considerably shorter than that collection, but it does hit all of her big hits on ABC/Dot, including all of her Top Ten hits: "The Happiest Girl in the Whole U.S.A.," "Funny Face," "Superman," "You Were Always There," "Little Girl Gone," "I'll Try a Little Bit Harder," "You Can't Be a Beacon (If Your Light Don't Shine)," "U.S. of A.," "It Do Feel Good," and "Don't Be Angry."

Scott Ross was an American harpsichordist who was both popular and renowned for his brilliant technique and insightful interpretations. He recorded the complete works of Scarlatti, Rameau, and Couperin, three composers, along with J.S. Bach, whose music he became identified with over his brief career. Ross was also a highly respected harpsichord teacher in Canada and France.

The Korean pianist Yeol Eum Son has attracted admirers in venues of multiple types: in the buttoned-down world of the classical music competition, and in the broad popular arena of YouTube, where a video of Son performing the Mozart Piano Concerto No. 21 in C major, K. 467, has attracted some ten million views. Son chooses that concerto for her Mozart debut, and here she has the added advantage of backing by Sir Neville Marriner and the Academy of St Martin-in-the-Fields.

Although Viktoria Mullova released a recording of Bach's three partitas for solo violin for Philips in 1994, she never had the opportunity with Philips to record their companion pieces, the three sonatas for solo violin, so this 2009 Onyx recording is Mullova's first complete recording of all six of these milestone works. In the intervening years, the Russian virtuoso has grown as a technician and as an interpreter. Mullova's tone is still large, but she has developed deeper subtlety.

Considering his rather vast discography, it may seem a bit odd that pianist Leif Ove Andsnes has visited the "Mozart well" on so few occasions. His previous Mozart offering came in 2004 with concertos No. 9 and No. 18. Four years later, Andsnes tried again with the concertos No. 17 and No. 20, again leading the Norwegian Chamber Orchestra from the piano. If you have the 2004 album and liked it, then you're sure to enjoy this one, as well, because very little has changed.

English conductors, including Thomas Beecham, John Barbirolli, Anthony Collins, and Colin Davis, have an excellent track record recording the symphonies of Jean Sibelius. Thus, when Simon Rattle first took a shot at Sibelius with his 1981 recording of the Fifth with the London Philharmonia, hopes were high that the next generation of English Sibelius conductors was ready to take up the torch.

Eschewing its usual heavy orchestral sound in favor of a more stripped-down instrumentation, Dutch violinist Janine Jansen's second album offers a fresh interpretation of one of the most performed classical works, Vivaldi's The Four Seasons. The 2005 follow-up to her Barry Wordsworth-conducted debut, the subtle but passionate renditions of the "La Primavera," "L'estate," "L'autunno," and "L'inverno" concertos are performed with a sparse, eight-piece ensemble including Lithuanian violinist Julian Rachlin, her cellist brother Maarten, and harpsichordist father Jan.