Four-handed harmonies - Schubert, Desyatnikov, Cage piano recordings

Two new superbly-recorded discs by Bertrand Chamayou, Pavel Kolesnikov and Tsoy Samson, pianists renowned for their concert work, show what's possible when the meters are running.

Nicholas Phan's 'A Change Is Gonna Come' - Stellar new recording of American protest songs

As I listened, repeatedly, to Nicholas Phan's new CD, "A Change Is Gonna Come" (Azica Records), a collection of American protest songs, it occurred to me that it's been a while since I've heard someone's singing called "honest."

Tough 'Choice' - Neel Mukherjee's rich new novel

The opening pages of Neel Mukherjee's novels have a singular staying power. Mukherjee's new three-part novel, "Choice" (Norton), has three you won't be forgetting anytime soon.

Great Britten from the jump – Violin Concerto, 'Spring Symphony,' shorter works in new recordings

Harmonia Mundi has released a new live recording of Benjamin Britten's Violin Concerto, with Isabelle Faust as soloist. As in the case of "Spring Symphony," the recording is rounded out with shorter pieces that demonstrate how fine a composer Britten was.

Tchaikovsky's 'The Enchantress' - New rarely heard opera and other works

One of the peskier questions in the classical music world: Does lesser-known mean lesser? New recordings of seldom-heard music by one Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, as familiar a composer as could be, say, no.

Garrard Conley's remarkable debut novel, 'All the World Beside'

Garrard Conley's debut novel, "All the World Beside," set in Puritan 18th-century America, involves a covert male love story as linear as human life, with its twists and turns, flash-forwards and flashbacks, that make it compelling.

A new 'Parsifal' - Philippe Jordan leads a transformative recording

Sony's splendid new "Parsifal," under the leadership of out conductor Philippe Jordan, illuminates the largely interior drama in part by dropping the faux religiosity that has accrued to Wagner's final opera.

In Proust's time: new discs from the 'Belle Epoque'

New recordings of music from the era of Marcel Proust include works by Karol Szymanowski, Leoš Janáček, Béla Bartók, Gabriel Fauré and Reynaldo Hahn.

Victor Heringer's 'The Love of Singular Men'

You'll know before the first sentence has run its course whether Victor Heringer's final novel, "The Love of Singular Men" (New Directions), is for you. It opens with a creation story, unless, that is, it's a desecration story.

New discs reconfigure French music classics

Leo Delibes' "Lakme," Camille Saint-Saens' "Symphonic Poems" and "The Carnival of the Animals," and Francis Poulenc's "Stabat Mater" are among the new recordings of works by French composers.

Nancy Spada's biography of musician Thomas Schippers

Nancy Spada's new "Beyond the Handsomeness: A Biography of Thomas Schippers" hits a sour note. Spada breezes past one thing people who know little else about Schippers know: his versatile sexuality.

'Chasing Bright Medusas' – Benjamin Taylor's new biography of Willa Cather

Benjamin Taylor's "Chasing Bright Medusas: A Life of Willa Cather," like his other biography on Marcel Proust, integrates the subject's homosexuality, communicating its centrality in the authors' lives.

Anne Eekhout's 'Mary and the Birth of Frankenstein'

Against the odds, by concentrating on its author, Anne Eekhout's new novel, "Mary and the Birth of Frankenstein" (translated from the Dutch by Laura Watkinson), makes Mary Shelley's life story more involving than most revisited novels based on classics.

Justin Torres' brilliant new novel, 'Blackouts'

Justin Torres deploys fluid, engaging writing throughout his new novel, "Blackouts," that's far from frivolous but not shy of hilarity when warranted. In a way all its own, it's a consistent pleasure to read.

The past recaptured: Out conductors bring back classical rarities

New recordings of operas and symphonies by Gaspare Spontini, Sergei Rachmaninoff and Franz Schreker have been released, led by a trio of prominent gay conductors.

Eliot Duncan's 'Ponyboy' – trans-male autofiction

Author Eliot Duncan provides his stories in three sections, called "negatives," presented in reverse order. For all its surface and latent sensationalism, Duncan's story is quite ordinary by present-day standards.

Manning up: New translations of Thomas Mann

Damian Searls's just-published translations of Thomas Mann's "New Selected Stories," fleet but sure-footed, come as a relief, a long-overdue exhalation.

Alice Winn's 'In Memoriam' - The soldiers' tale

With her debut novel, "In Memoriam," screenwriter Alice Winn joins the ranks of the finest war writers this side of Homer and Heller.

His lion eyes: Henry Hoke's 'Open Throat'

There's such sinewy, feral strength in the voice that powers Henry Hoke's new novel, "Open Throat" that the term "genre-bending" doesn't suffice. The novel is literally in a class of its own.

Catherine Lacey's 'Biography of X'

Catherine Lacey's new novel, "Biography of X," tries to be all things – and succeeds. It's being praised for its genre-bending, but somehow entertainment seems too small a word.

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