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The peculiarities of musical life can result in live performers being as absent from local concert halls as dead ones. Two of America's finest musicians who haven't performed in Pittsburgh for years have recently issued magnificent new recordings no music lover should miss. Other recent issues present the artistry of musicians who are gone from concert life forever.

Violinist Hilary Hahn is now 24 years old and made her Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra debut 10 years ago, but hasn't been back to Heinz Hall for more than five years now. She was playing in West Virginia this September when the Pittsburgh Symphony subscription series opened with Midori playing Ludwig van Beethoven's Violin Concerto. Alas, Hahn's Beethoven at the reopening of Heinz Hall in 1995 was far superior to Midori's. The young American plays with keener perception of the music's depth and a bigger and more beautiful sound. The symphony's explanation of Hahn's absence from Heinz Hall is "scheduling conflicts."

Fortunately, music lovers have the option of acquiring Hahn's new CD on Deutsche Grammophon offering the Violin Concerto by Edward Elgar and "The Lark Ascending" by Ralph Vaughan Williams. Hahn's characteristically rewarding shaping of lyrical material, fully engaging the emotional weight of Elgar's world, is complemented by fearless rapid stratospheric ascents and simply stunning passages in octaves.

Hahn's English album is a wonderful collaboration with the London Symphony Orchestra led by Colin Davis, one of the world's greatest conductors -- who is no relation to the Pittsburgh Symphony's leader of its artistic team, Andrew Davis.

The Deutsche Grammophon recording also includes one of the most endearing works for solo violin and orchestra, "The Lark Ascending." The performance combines scrupulous preparation -- just listen to the shadings in the brief orchestral introduction -- with spontaneous flights of fancy.

Murray Perahia

When pianist Murray Perahia made his widely acclaimed recording of all of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's piano concerti 20 years ago, he conducted the orchestra from the keyboard -- as the composer did when he performed the pieces.

Now Perahia has made his first recording conducting without the keyboard, leading the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields in a transcription of Beethoven's Twelfth String Quartet on Sony Classical. It is a marvelous interpretation that is both intelligent and emotional. His exquisite sense of style evokes at times the spirit of Franz Joseph Haydn, which is most appropriate because Beethoven's incredibly imaginative late period never lost its roots in the music of his past.

The performance validates the recent comparison of Perahia with legendary musician Benjamin Britten by the leader of the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, Kenneth Sillito. Perahia's probity fully compensates for the inevitable loss of moment-to-moment individuality in the various parts by an overarching vision.

The album is completed with Perahia at the keyboard playing Beethoven's Piano Sonata No. 28 with a winning combination of sheer beauty and insightfulness. The pianist's recent focus on the music of Johann Sebastian Bach finds resonance in Beethoven's finale. But then, Beethoven played "The Well-tempered Clavier" in public when he was 12 years old.

Reiner & 'Living Stereo'

After Fritz Reiner was music director of the Pittsburgh Symphony, leaving in 1948, he conducted at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City before becoming music director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. RCA Victor documented his work with the Chicago Symphony just as recording technology was making big advances that the company marketed as "Living Stereo."

Now the label has begun reissuing its great old recordings on compatible super-audio compact discs -- SACDs. The dimension of sound that emerges from these new re-releases is stunning. The impact, colors of timbre and spatial clarity are actually more satisfying than many digital recordings. Choice of microphones and their placement is more important to recording quality than the medium onto which the "sound information" is stored.

Reiner might have been a difficult person -- especially for musicians who didn't play well enough -- but the way he drives "Night on Bald Mountain" is more exciting than by any other conductor except Leopold Stokowski, who modified the orchestration. Other short Russian pieces also offer exceptional delight, as does the potent characterizations Reiner achieves in "Pictures at an Exhibition."

The initial release of RCA "Living Stereo" SACDs also includes Reiner's classic accounts of "Also sprach Zarathustra" and "Ein Heldenleben" and Bela Bartok's Concerto for Orchestra and Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta.

Legendary pianist Artur Rubinstein's versions of Frederic Chopin's Ballades and Scherzos also sound astonishing in their most recent reincarnation, as do recordings by Charles Munch and the Boston Symphony of the ballet "Daphnis and Chloe" and Camille Saint-Saens' "Organ Symphony."

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