Perhaps opera may do better to step out of the velvet corsets and Romantic sets, and bring the medium into the 21st century. The question burns, however: is it sacrilege to bring the likes of Verdi into the realm of a Pink Floyd laser show? Revisions of opera has seen far less enthusiastic reception than similar re-workings of Shakespeare. Are opera fans simply too die-hard, or is there something intrinsic about the vibrato craft that makes its antiquity timeless?

That protectionist sentiment probably accounted for the vehement booing that greeted the director Luc Bondy and his production team when the Metropolitan Opera introduced its new staging of Puccini’s “Tosca” on Sept. 21. The show is no Eurotrash outrage. Mr. Bondy does not even update the setting, let alone turn things surreal or present the story of Tosca, a famed prima donna; her hotheaded rebel lover, Mario Cavaradossi; and the twisted chief of police, Baron Scarpia, as a rehearsal of a modern-day opera company’s “Tosca” production.

The problems arose, it would seem, because for all its contemporary trappings, the production was essentially traditional. So even little deviations from the source seemed like a self-conscious attempt by Mr. Bondy to shake up “Tosca” and rattle “Tosca” lovers.

Now, for an unabashedly avant-garde approach to a staple, there is the Los Angeles Opera’s new production of Wagner’s “Ring” cycle, directed by Achim Freyer, which is being introduced in installments, so far to mixed reactions. I saw “Die Walküre” last spring and will attend the recently opened “Siegfried” on Wednesday. (“Götterdämmerung” arrives in April, and three complete cycles will be presented in May and June.)

Mr. Freyer, a German theater artist, painter and director, who is overseeing all aspects of the production, tries to capture the magical elements of this mythological tale through weirdly abstract costumes, sets and staging. Characters wield neon spears that look like Jedi light sabers. Alien creatures descend from above and infiltrate the action, a lot of which is not depicted, so that Mr. Freyer can delve into Jungian resonances.

When the long-separated twins Siegmund and Sieglinde meet during Act I of “Die Walküre” (Plácido Domingo and Anja Kampe in the performance I attended), they are surreal, half-complete figures: Siegmund’s face is painted white on one side, black on the other; Sieglinde’s, in reverse. Rather than falling helplessly into a sensual embrace, for long stretches of the act the two are sequestered atop small platforms on opposite sides of the stage, facing forward, seldom looking at each other.

I terribly miss the human dimensions of the characters in this sci-fi “Ring.” After all, Wagner meant for us to see ourselves in this story of a tormented, overreaching god and his dysfunctional family.

But say what you will, Mr. Freyer has a strong production concept, which he conveys through elaborate, sometimes dazzling and very expensive imagery and stage effects (costing more than $32 million). The lesson seems clear: If you decide to go with a concept, stick with it.

No similarly strong take emerges in Mr. Bondy’s convoluted “Tosca,” which replaces the Met’s lavishly realistic Franco Zeffirelli production. At least Mr. Zeffirelli’s popular show had luxurious style, something you can’t say of Mr. Bondy’s anti-Zeffirelli staging, with its cold, spare, emaciated sets.

Mr. Bondy seemed determined to show what a sexually sadistic monster Scarpia is. Actually, I have never seen a production of “Tosca” in which Scarpia’s lechery and ruthlessness has not been utterly evident. The bigger challenge for a director is to convey Scarpia’s other side, the aristocratic bearing and courtly manners that he can turn on as the occasion demands.

A similar problem afflicts many productions of Mozart’s “Don Giovanni.” Determined to show Giovanni as a reprobate who runs through women, directors fail to convey his high-born swagger and rakish charm.

It is understandable that a director might want to clear out the theatrical clichés that have attached to a classic, even to the point of discounting stage directions. But if the production is essentially traditional, that director had better come up with compelling alternative action.

Take the ending of Act II in the new “Tosca.” When Scarpia makes his proposition — if Tosca will succumb to him just once, he will retract Mario’s death sentence and set the lovers free — she is forced into the unthinkable: she must kill him.

As the music, the stage directions and what we have learned about Tosca so far in the opera all suggest, she stabs Scarpia in a fit of desperation and will. This comes through in the vehement phrases she sings as Scarpia dies, affirming, almost in an existential rant, what she has done: “This is Tosca’s kiss!” “Look at me! It is I, Tosca, O Scarpia!”

But in Mr. Bondy’s staging, Tosca (the charismatic soprano Karita Mattila) plots the murder, albeit quickly. Devising an entrapment for Scarpia, she reclines, alluringly, on a couch, the knife hidden behind her, awaiting her prey. That Tosca would be so calculating at this moment seems all wrong. There I go, sounding like an opera fanatic saying, “Tosca would not do that.” But directors like Mr. Bondy drive you to it.

Then, as the stage directions indicate, during a long span of eerily subdued orchestral music Tosca enacts a ritual, placing candles on either side of Scarpia’s body and a crucifix on his heart. This theatrical stroke is clearly too familiar and melodramatic for Mr. Bondy.

Instead, he has Ms. Mattila climb to the threshold of a window, where she considers leaping to her death. But she collects herself and slinks onto a couch next to the one over which Scarpia’s body is sprawled. As the curtain falls, she appears to be musing on what has happened and what to do next.

What of the candles and crucifix? That Tosca is a devout believer is central to her character. Yes, she is having an affair with Mario, which is technically a sin. But Tosca has a deeply personal relationship with the Madonna. They speak woman to woman. Tosca is an artist; she cannot follow norms. She is sure that the Madonna understands this.

So when Tosca kills Scarpia, even though he was evil, she must both expiate her sin and enact a sacred ritual for his sorry soul. A director who ignores this staging idea, the work of another production team (Puccini and his librettists), had better have a brilliant substitute. “Should I kill myself?” hardly qualifies.

Many opera directors have revealed fresh insights into works through the simple device of updating. Updating has gotten a bad rap. Shifting a story to another era can easily seem a glib and arbitrary maneuver. But done with imagination, an updated production can take today’s audiences to the core of a familiar work. Jonathan Miller’s inspired production of Verdi’s “Rigoletto,” for example, first presented at the English National Opera in 1982.

Mr. Miller relocates the story from 16th-century Mantua to Little Italy in Manhattan in the 1950s. The Duke of Mantua becomes a powerful, preening head of a Mafia gang. And in an ingenious stroke, Rigoletto, Verdi’s hunchbacked court jester, who must keep the Duke and his entourage amused and be the butt of jokes, becomes the bartender at the gang’s favorite hangout.

One of the stated missions of Peter Gelb as general manager of the Met is to entice new audiences into the opera house with boldly theatrical productions. But who is the target audience for this muddled half-and-half “Tosca,” no experiment in audacious modern theater?

Joseph Volpe, Mr. Gelb’s predecessor, took more risks in recruiting directors than he is generally given credit for, though mainly with operas of second-tier popularity. Robert Wilson’s boldly abstract staging of Wagner’s “Lohengrin” was booed on opening night in 1998 but cheered the next season, after audiences had adjusted to the look and concept of the work, and after the cast’s original stylized hand and arm gestures had been toned down considerably. Herbert Wernicke’s wondrous fairy-tale staging of Strauss’s “Frau Ohne Schatten” remains one of my all-time favorite Met shows. Other standouts included Jürgen Flimm’s production of Beethoven’s “Fidelio,” placed in some vaguely contemporary repressive state, and Francesca Zambello’s elegantly mystical rendering of Berlioz’s “Troyens.”

But for the bread-and-butter works, like “La Bohème” “Turandot,” “La Traviata” and, yes, “Tosca,” Mr. Volpe wanted productions from which the Met could get some mileage and pack in audiences even when the casts were routine. This usually meant ordering up another Zeffirelli extravaganza.

Maybe you can mock Mr. Volpe’s realism, but he knew what he was talking about. Maybe this season’s stagings of Rossini’s “Armida” by Mary Zimmerman’ or Pierre Audi’s production of Verdi’s “Attila,” are a venture, so what? Opera fans are not about to have their hearts broken by re-interpretations of these pieces. The Met, however, has quite the disappointing burden to carry with Mr. Bondy’s “Tosca”.

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My Take: What ever happened to “go big or go home”? The reason so many Shakespeare plays have been successfully adapted is largely the directors’ dedication to the theme. The first example to rise in my mind is the Romeo + Juliet with Claire Danes and Leonardo diCaprio. Baz Luhrmann was dedicated to vintage-inspired, southern California street violence that it completely sold the world. Had Luhrmann merely half-done Verona Beach, the movie would have been less a gut-wrenching tear jerker, and more of a snooze.

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Revamp opera, refinance your home

While centuries-old works of art are given face-lifts and set changes, your home finances could probably use some tweaking. If you’re in Louisville home mortgages are now at an all-time low. Take advantage of the favorable housing market and get out of a bum deal on your real estate. This is the perfect time to re-assess you Louisville, Kentucky mortgage.

LOS ANGELES — The Los Angeles Philharmonic welcomed its 11th conductor, Gustavo Dudamel with a free concert at the Hollywood Bowl on Saturday night, as opposed to a staid program in Walt Disney Hall, the orchestra’s home. The more formal show is on Thursday. “Bienvenido Gustavo!,” as the concert was called, ended with a vivacious and exploratory rendition of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, conducted by Mr. Dudamel. The orchestra collected a range of superb vocalists to solo, backed with a chorus of 200 handpicked from the Los Angeles Master Chorale, the Albert McNeil Jubilee Singers, the Our Lady of Los Angeles Spanish Choir, the Philippine Chamber Singers and other local ensembles.

But there has never been a gala quite like this to celebrate the arrival of a conductor to a major American orchestra. For more than two hours before Mr. Dudamel appeared, there were performances that brought together renowned artists from pop, jazz, gospel and the blues with young area musicians. Andraé Crouch, the Grammy-winning gospel singer and songwriter, performed with his New Christ Memorial Church Adult and Children’s Choir. The bass and trumpet player Flea — a founding member of the Red Hot Chili Peppers and, like Mr. Dudamel, a musician devoted to musical education — performed songs with an ensemble of youngsters from the Silverlake Conservatory of Music, which he opened in 2001.

The Latin rock musician David Hidalgo, the blues great Taj Mahal and Alfredo Rodríguez, a young Cuban pianist, also took part. And the jazz giant Herbie Hancock played with an ensemble from the Los Angeles County High School for the Arts. When the actor Jack Black, introducing Mr. Hancock, paid tribute to Mr. Dudamel for galvanizing Los Angeles (“This dude’s on fire,” he said), the audience, which packed the 18,000-seat bowl, cheered and shouted, “Bienvenido Gustavo!”

That Mr. Dudamel, who made his American debut conducting the Philharmonic at the Hollywood Bowl in 2005, has already had an enormous impact on the cultural life of this city was clear when he made his first appearance of the night, conducting the YOLA Expo Center Youth Orchestra. YOLA (Youth Orchestra Los Angeles) is part of a two-year-old initiative by the Philharmonic to provide instruments and orchestra training to students, modeled on El Sistema, the vast music education system in Mr. Dudamel’s native Venezuela.

If you’re organizing your own massive outdoor event, you’re familiar with the headache of logistics. The answer to your security woes are portable metal detectors safeguarding the audience and minizing your liability. Metal detectors are time-tested and proven effective in the fight against violence.

Some 100 students were selected to perform on Saturday. At 28, his shaggy locks somewhat trimmed for the occasion, Mr. Dudamel looked like the youngsters’ cool older brother. The students, mostly from minority neighborhoods in South Los Angeles, gamely played through an orchestral arrangement of the “Ode to Joy” from Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony by Steven Venz, and their families had pride-of-place seating in the first rows of the bowl.

All American orchestras now espouse music education and reaching out to the community. But Mr. Dudamel, as a product of the Venezuelan program, shows a particularly intense desire to connect with young people and make music accessible to all. If, working with Deborah Borda, the president of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, he can make it central to the education of students in Los Angeles, Mr. Dudamel could change the template for what an American orchestra can be.

None of this would matter, though, if Mr. Dudamel did not have the musical substance to back up his vision. The depth of his skills and artistry is about to be tested vigorously.

He met the first test on this night with the performance of the Beethoven Ninth. It is always hard to assess the quality of an orchestra’s performance at an amplified outdoor space. The vocal soloists and the choristers were overamplified. In the finale, when Matthew Rose sang the first words of Schiller’s text, he sounded like the Bionic Booming Baritone. The soprano Measha Brueggergosman, the mezzo-soprano Michelle DeYoung and the tenor Toby Spence, all exceptional singers, came through with a more balanced acoustic.

But Mr. Dudamel’s intentions were mostly realized. This was not the Beethoven’s Ninth some might have expected from a young dynamo. The tempos were restrained. Even in the scherzo, he strove for an organic steady pace. The slow movement had breadth and quiet intensity. And the finale, the choristers fired with enthusiasm, was exhilarating. It was affecting to hear Schiller’s references to the “starry canopy” performed outdoors on this balmy night.

After the prolonged ovation, Mr. Dudamel addressed the audience, which included many Latino families, in English and Spanish.

He spoke of being a proud Venezuelan and a proud South American but also a “proud American,” saying that there should be no north and south but “one American continent.”

As the fireworks began to light up, he then repeated the ending section of the finale. The maestro’s name lit up like a marquee above the performers- the perfect touch for the Hollywood Bowl to welcome Hollywood’s newest conductor.

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My Take: It’s all-too-common for a rookie to come out of the gate full-force. It’s a relief to see the young conductor keep his head about him and deliver a soulful, restrained program- even when the orchestra around him is so devoted to giving him a glitzy, LA welcome complete with fireworks and lights.

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Payroll for new and long-time employees

A primary obligation of an employer- from a symphony to a street cleaning company- is to ensure your workers get paid the correct amount in a timely manner. If your business’ payroll is less than amazingly efficient, you are losing money making sure your employees get theirs. An integrated payroll service takes the pressure off your company and astronimical accounting fees out of your budget.

LONDON — If you go to a Ukelele Orchestra show, the only expectation you should bring is for an exceptional performance. They recognize that not everyone is so caution-less, as orchestra member Dave Suich stated, “Relief is one of the major emotions of our audience.

But the happy surprise of encountering something completely different from the Tiny Tim-style hamming or banjo-plucking embarrassment of your imagination doesn’t wholly explain the deep love the orchestra inspires, not just in Britain, but also in Europe and as far away as New Zealand and Japan. Previously the private passion of a large but sub rosa group of devotees, the orchestra hit mainstream popularity last month when it performed to a sold-out crowd at the BBC Proms music festival at the Royal Albert Hall here.

“They have grown into a much-loved institution,” The Observer of London wrote. In The Financial Times Laura Battle praised the orchestra members’ “consummate skill” and said that the “sophisticated sound they make — both percussive and melodic — is at once hilarious and heartfelt.” The Evening Standard said, “The country would plainly be a happier place if more of us played the ukulele.”

Part of the appeal is that the group — eight of them, all singing and playing the ukulele — extracts more than seems humanly possible from so small and so modest an instrument, with its four little strings. Part of it is the members’ deadpan sense of humor, in which they laugh at themselves as much as at the music.

There is also the unexpected delight of their repertory, a genre-bending array stretching from “The Ride of the Valkyries” to the Sex Pistols’ “Anarchy in the U.K,” which they perform as a friendly folk song, infusing even lines like “I am an Antichrist” with a cozy bonhomie. They do a cover of Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” which affords Mr. Suich an opportunity to release his long ponytail and fling his hair around, à la Cobain.

Ukuleles are mildly humorous and kind of cute, particularly when deployed by adults dressed in black tie. “The minute that eight people walk onstage with ukes, you’re winning already,” said Will Grove-White, an orchestra member.

Six of the group — Peter Brooke Turner, Kitty Lux, George Hinchliffe and Hester Goodman, in addition to Mssrs. Grove-White and Suich — met recently to discuss its philosophy and raison d’être. (Missing were Richie Williams, who was not feeling well, and Jonty Bankes, who was out of the country.)

They have been together, more or less, since 1985, and they spoke in a jumble, finishing one another’s sentences and undercutting one another’s remarks like the old friends they are.

“Don’t listen to him, he’s wearing brown shoes,” warned Mr. Brooke Turner, as Mr. Hinchliffe tried to make a serious, nonukulele-related point about the National Health Service. “In England that is a sign of untrustworthiness.”

They all generate ideas for new pieces and play around with novel ways of making them work. The idea is often to do things “that are not exactly normal,” Mr. Hinchliffe said, to get the ukuleles to produce noises that are nothing like ukulele noises at all.

“It’s good having this somewhat poxy instrument that can’t do much because there aren’t limitless options, and it forces you to think imaginatively about how to create sounds and rhythms,” Mr. Grove-White said.

They use their voices: whistling in a certain way, for instance, can approximate the sound of a wind instrument in a piece like the theme song from “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.” Striking a ukulele to dampen the strings, and then moving the nonplucking hand up and down lightly can mimic the “wah-wah” sound of an electric guitar pedal in the theme song from “Shaft.” To poke fun of songs full of flamboyantly long notes, the orchestra plays rapid successions of short plucks with their strings.

“With heavy-metal riffs, when you pluck them out on the ukulele, they sound really weedy,” Mr. Grove-White said. “It’s a good way to mock pomposity.”

They do that often, and cheerfully. “One of the things that we feel about pop music is that while we’re very fond of it, very affectionate toward it, at the same time we recognize the ludicrousness and pretentiousness of it,” Mr. Hinchliffe said. “A lot of songs really are extremely ludicrous. In a way, it’s kind of interesting to observe that you can love something and find it risible at the same time.”

The band had its roots in Mr. Hinchliffe’s childhood in “the People’s Republic of South Yorkshire,” as he calls it, when his father brought home a ukulele-banjo, a cousin of the ukulele. “After a while I said to my father, ‘Could we get some strings for it?’ ” he recalled.

In 1985 he bought a ukulele for his friend and fellow musician Kitty Lux. “We were in a doo-wop band together,” Ms. Lux said. “It was called, I don’t remember, Something Something and the Acid Drops.”

Mr. Suich joined too, and the other members gravitated toward the group over the years, relieved to find like-minded ukulele adherents.

“People love them like puppies,” Mr. Suich said.

“They lift depression,” Mr. Grove-White said.

“It’s quite an empowering instrument,” Ms. Goodman said.

“You can do an entire world tour while carrying only hand luggage,” Mr. Hinchliffe said.

If you’re ready to liquidate your assets and hit the road, sell your cash flow notes, cash in, and spend it en route.  Now is the perfect time to trade in those real estate notes.

They have deliberately not sought record deals and earn most of their money from 150 or so live performances a year and from the albums they sell directly from www.ukuleleorchestra.com, their Web site. Recently they produced “Dreamspiel,” a ukulele opera with lyrics by the American playwright Michelle Carter, and collaborated with the British Film Institute to set snippets of old films to music in a show called “Ukulelescope.”

At the Proms the orchestra performed a cover of Wheatus’s “Teenage Dirtbag,” sung sweetly by Ms. Goodman and including an original line: “Come with me Tuesday/Bring your ukulele.” Ms. Lux sang a Prom favorite, “Jerusalem,” introducing it as a song “about a nuclear power station in the green, rolling English countryside.”

There was also a cover of Talking Heads’ “Psycho Killer,” performed by a suitably insane-sounding Mr. Grove-White, ranting nonsensically in something that was not quite French. “I started approximating his lyrics, but you get the feeling he made them up as well,” Mr. Grove-White said of David Byrne.

The high point might very well have been when the audience- at the band’s request- joined in with over 1,000 ukeleles to Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy.” The band’s goal to spread their uke-love may very well be considered a success, as members of the crowd who could not keep up technically simply waved their instruments in the air in a pure expression of the joy of strings.

From the stage, Mr. Hinchliffe happily called the piece “a fragment of Beethoven for 1,008 ukuleles.”

My Take: Who hasn’t seen “While My Uke Gently Weeps” on YouTube? Only the most joyless among us- as we’ve all been enchanted by the tiny instrument’s ability to strum out some of the most compelling music known to man (yes, the Beatles).

The ukelele has proven itself to be an expressive and versatile member of the stringed arsenal in recent years, emerging from almost every corner to take its place with punk bands and bluegrass groups. I can’t wait to see one rock out to Lady Gaga.

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A shindig worthy of 1,000 ukes

When you’re throwing a soiree- especially if you expect a crowd of people willing to wave their instruments in the air- the first step is having a fantastic party invitation. No matter if it’s a going-away or a birthday party, invitations tell your guests yours is the party of the season.

Look great, feel better

If the dulcent sounds of a ukelele does not satisfy all your bodily needs, maybe it’s time you stepped into an Alexander Technique studio. The recolutionary process changes your day-to-day and goes on to affect your big picture- mood, pain, even physical ability. The best part is: try the Alexander Technique and stress will almost visibly disappear. Join the growing movement of happy bodies that move with the Alexander Technique in New York.

Leif Ove Andsnes, pianist; Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Franz Welser-Möst. EMI Classics 2 64182 2; CD.

“Shadows of Silence” is the latest release from Leif Ove Andsnes, the Norwegian pianist famed for grand, elegant perfomances of classic works. It follows in his established pattern of contemporary interpretations. This newest album is devoted to new pieces, which include two compositions created especially for him: Marc-André Dalbavie’s Piano Concerto and an impressionistic, moody 16-minute solo piece- the work of Danish composer Bent Sorensen. The album’s title piece, the work was commissioned by Carnegie Hall, where Mr. Andsnes premiered it in 2005.

The album opens with a pensive, delicate performance of Mr. Sorensen’s short, hushed and enigmatic “Lullabies.” Next comes a stunning account of the Piano Concerto by the Polish composer Witold Lutoslawski, with Franz Welser-Möst conducting the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra.

Bartok was clearly a template for Lutoslawski in this 1987 work, which crackles with earthy rhythms and elemental, folkloric tunes. Mr. Andsnes dispatches the technically formidable piano part with lucid clarity and effortless brilliance, from the whirlwind runs of the maniacal Presto movement to the pummeling chords of the finale, which comes across like a fractured peasant dance.

Mr. Dalbavie, born in 1961 in France, is associated with spectralism, an ambiguous term applied to composers who explore the physical, spatial and perceptual qualities of sound. Yet for all the atmospherics, there is nothing amorphous about this fitful piece, which erupts with obsessive scale patterns and repetitive riffs. Mr. Andsnes combines transparent colorings and incisive articulations in his riveting performance. Mr. Welser-Möst and the orchestra are vibrant partners in both concertos.

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Gyorgy Kurtag’s “Jatekok” (“Games”) are descendants of Schumann’s character pieces for piano. Mr. Andsnes plays four of them here, brilliantly.

Erik Heide, violinist; Mathias Reumert, percussionist; Aarhus Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Thomas Sondergard. DaCapo 8.226034; CD.

THE Danish composer Poul Ruders wrote his vivacious, expertly wrought “Concerto in Pieces” (1995) as a sequel to Britten’s “Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra.” Commissioned by the BBC Symphony Orchestra, he followed Britten’s example and composed variations on a theme by Purcell: in this case the Witches’ ‘Ho-Ho-Ho’ chorus from Act II of “Dido and Aeneas.”

Thomas Sondergard conducts the Aarhus Symphony Orchestra in a high-energy performance of the engaging score, in which Mr. Ruders spotlights different instruments with witty juxtapositions and quirky timbral effects. The theme is tossed among different groups of instruments in the third variation, then woven through a bluesy prism. The saxophone plays a languidly beautiful, rhapsodic solo, which is then taken up by the tuba in the fifth variation, and the sixth features explosive percussion. An eerie trumpet solo in the eighth variation and a frenzy of string pizzicatos in the ninth lead to the re-emergence of the theme in the triumphant, throbbing Finale fugato.

The disc also includes Mr. Ruders’s Violin Concerto No. 1 (1981), a homage to Vivaldi’s “Four Seasons” that reveals Mr. Ruders’s Minimalist affinities. The soloist’s frenetic line in the first movement, which Erik Heide plays with flair, unfolds over repetitive figurations and rhythms and the moody harmonies from the first movement of Vivaldi’s “Winter” concerto. After the elegiac second movement, which Mr. Heide performs sensitively, comes the finale, “Winter Chaconne,” which veers between exuberance and introspection.

Mathias Reumert is the able soloist in the brooding “Monodrama” (1988), a percussion concerto that Mr. Ruders describes as “pretty grim.” Apocalyptic might be a better description of the manner in which the percussionist, accompanied by dark orchestral rumblings, pounds his way through to a stark conclusion. VIVIEN SCHWEITZER

Andras Schiff, pianist. ECM New Series 2001; two CDs.

ANDRAS SCHIFF has been busy in recent seasons performing the Beethoven sonatas, but if you attended installments of the cycle at Carnegie Hall, you got glimpses of his next project. As encores he played Bach partitas: not just the odd movement, but whole works. And in September 2007 he recorded all six partitas at a single recital in Neumarkt, Germany.

This is Mr. Schiff’s second traversal of these works on disc; the first was a 1983 studio recording for Decca that was highly regarded in its day, and still is, but that sounds positively dumpy beside this vigorously played, beautifully recorded ECM version.

Mr. Schiff’s tempos are brisker and harder driven now, and the clarity of texture that has long been his hallmark is greatly magnified: his articulation could hardly be sharper, and his ability to sustain it through a performance of all six works in one sitting is extraordinary.

At times his seemingly endless well of energy can seem overbearing. Mr. Schiff’s careful balancing of Bach’s lines within fast-moving movements seems to have an intellectual severity that overrides the music’s visceral joys. And though the dance movements here were not meant to be danced, they should be taken at danceable tempos. A dancer trying to keep up with Mr. Schiff in, for example, the Gigue in the A minor Partita, would probably collapse, gasping, before the double bar.

Mr. Schiff also has a light side- his minuets are consistently spirited and bright. His subtly shaded accounts of the relaxed Praeludium of the B flat Partita, several of the sarabandes and the Tempo di Gavotta of the E minor Partita are pictures of elegance and transparency. Those qualities stay with you, along with Mr. Schiff’s fastidious focus.

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