The Compact Collection

This week's best CD releases

There was once a time when the strap-line "Original Motion Picture Soundtrack" signalled dry acoustics and cramped, in-your-face sonics – especially where voices were concerned. Not so the sumptuous soundtrack for Benoit Jacquot's film of Puccini's Tosca, where Angela Gheorghiu and Roberto Alagna sing Tosca and Cavaradossi respectively opposite the veteran Ruggero Raimondi's subtle Scarpia, which is due for release on 12 November. EMI's sound stage is luxurious in the extreme, the perfect aural setting for Antonio Pappano's texture-sensitive reading of the score, especially at the evocative start of Act III and the cruelly delusory duet that leads the lovers to their separate deaths.

Gheorghiu is in magnificent voice, a warmly emotive Tosca who can summon the most focused pianissimos. Her "Vissi d'arte" is a touching example of controlled abandonment, and her horror-stricken final scene is the equal of any role model she might care to name – and, yes, I include Callas. Angela Gheorghiu is the equal of any dramatic soprano of the last 50 years. Her husband, Roberto Alagna, is almost as good, certainly at the point in Act II where he reacts to Napoleon's triumph with a deliriously provocative "Vittoria!" And Raimondi's Scarpia is uncommonly compassionate, less a villainous autocrat than a pathologically driven victim.

Printed interviews with all three principals reveal some cosy perspectives, such as Gheorghiu falling freshly in love as soon she faces hubby on stage. She values a national lineage that reaches back to the first Tosca, also a Romanian, but prefers to forget her recorded forbears while she tackles the role herself. Those include one Gigliola Frazzoni, a worthy protagonist from the 1950s who turns up on a cheap mono Warner Fonit Tosca. It is worth considering, for the sake of Ferruccio Tagliavini's refined Cavaradossi, and the sonorous, if unsubtle, Scarpia of Gian Giacomo Guelfi. Arturo Basile conducts very well, though Pappano need not worry. But then, neither did the best of his predecessors, Victor de Sabata (for Callas and di Stefano, EMI) and Herbert von Karajan (for di Stefano and Price, Decca).

Talking of comparisons, BBC Legends and Orfeo have released two very different live recordings by Wilhelm Kempff of Schumann's Fantasy in C and Brahms's Sonata in F minor. Orfeo's 1958 Salzburg recital is spontaneity caught on the wing, though a mass of finely tooled detail leaves the pianist's identity in no doubt. By contrast, the 1969 QEH recital on BBC Legends shimmers where its predecessor rages. It's not so much a case of compromised technique as of an all-embracing calm that holds countless passages in trance-like suspension. Were the two recitals separated by some sort of life-changing experience? It certainly sounds like it. Anyone remotely interested in Kempff will have to have both.

Puccini: 'Tosca' – Angela Gheorghiu, Roberto Alagna, Ruggero Raimondi, Royal Opera House/Antonio Pappano (EMI CDS5 57173 2, two discs)

Puccini: 'Tosca' – Gigliola Frazzoni, Ferruccio Tagliavini, Gian Giacomo Guelfi, RAI Turin/Arturo Basile (Warner Fonit 8573 87479-2, two discs)

Schumann: Fantasy in C/Brahms: Sonata No 3 in F minor/Beethoven: Bagatelles Op 126 – Wilhelm Kempff (Orfeo C 570 011 B)

Schumann: Fantasy in C/Brahms Sonata No 3 in F/Schumann: 'Papillons' Wilhelm Kempff (BBC Legends BBCL 4085-2)