KRONOS QUARTET (5 STARS -- SEE MY REVIEW) An excellent new world music collection from Kronos, featuring mainly traditional music arranged for string quartet from Eurasia and Africa.

BERND ALOIS ZIMMERMAN (5 STARS -- SEE MY REVIEW) Three works from Zimmerman (1918-1970) including Thomas Zehetmair playing the "Violin Concerto." Heinz Holliger leads the WDR Koln Sinfonieorchester. (ECM)

WOLFGANG RIHM Volume Four in Hanssler's Rihm Edition.

HELMUT LACHENMANN 2-disc set with the 1977 guitar duet "Salut fur Caldwell" and the 1968/1978 choral & orchestral "Les Consolations" on Disc One, and the 2005 "Concertini" on Disc Two, featuring the Klangforum Wien. (Kairos)

BEAT FURRER This new disc features a piano concerto and several vocal works by the Austrian composer. (Kairos)

FRIEDRICH GOLDMANN (1941-2009) This is a set of chamber works from a great German composer who sadly died in July 2009. (Academy)

BERLIN CLASSICS This is a 5-disc set from the Berlin Classics archives of music from the DDR, with 11 symphonies by 11 different composers, including Hanns Eisler, Friedrich Goldmann, and Paul Dessau.

PER NORGARD Premiere of Norgard's Symphony No. 7 along with a new recording of his masterpiece, Symphony No. 3, from Thomas Dausgard and the DNSO. (Da Capo)

JONATHAN HARVEY The Arditti Quartet performs Harvey. The AQ recorded his String Quartets 1 & 2 for Montaigne several years ago, but now there are 1, 2, 3 & 4 plus a string trio, and new recordings of all. (Aeon)

IANNIS XENAKIS New recordings by the Jack Quartet, with a 1994 quartet that was not included in the Arditti Quartet set of chamber music on Montaigne.

ELLIOTT CARTER This second disc with quartets No. 2, 3 & 4 completes the Pacifica Quartet's Carter Cycle of string quartets, following last year's disc with No. 1 and No. 5. (Naxos)

THOMAS ADES This opera premiered at the ROC (Royal OperaHouse Covent Garden) in 2004, and this EMI recording is from the 2007 ROC revival. Ades has now moved into Britten's operatic territory, and has already been acclaimed as the New Britten by many in the British classical world.

EARLE BROWN'S CONTEMPORARY SOUND SERIES, VOL. 1 This 3-CD set is the first of 6 to be released by Wergo, the first digitized CD release of the 18 LP series recorded between 1960 and 1973, documenting the avant-garde.

UNSUK CHIN While we were waiting for the award-winning "Violin Concerto," Chin wrote, premiered and recorded an opera -- "Alice In Wonderland." The opera was a major disappointment, but hopefully the concerto was worth waiting for! Viviane Hager plays violin & Kent Nagano conducts the Montreal Symphony Orchestra. (Analekta)

MICHAEL DAUGHERTY Three orchestral works by the American composer of my generation (b. 1954), with Neeme Jarvi leading the Detroit Symphony Orchestra. The Motor City Triptych was inspired by Diego Rivera's murals of auto plants and auto workers. (Naxos)

STEFANO GERVASONI Mdi Ensemble performs works by the Italian composer, a student of Luigi Nono's now teaching in Paris (Aeon)

GYORGY KURTAG This is the fourth recording of Kurtag's KAFKA FRAGMENTS, and includes a DVD of a performance. (Bridge)

LEI LANG A new voice, a young Asian-American composer. (Mode)

JEREMY DALE ROBERTS The Kreuzer Quartet performs works by the British composer born in 1934 -- excellent. (NMC)

SALVATORE SCIARRINO New 3-disc set from Kairos, an orchestral version of the music he wrote for an Italian TV production of the Divina Commedia.