Chamber

The palpable buzz of these joyously unchecked performances by two titans of the last century demonstrates exactly why live recordings are so often preferable to studio ones. Both performances have rarely been bettered

These five modernist spinning tops, compelling vortexes of ordered chaos and chaotic order, span five decades of the 101-year-old Carter's epic career. The Pacifica Quartet's intense renditions, recorded last year, are already a modern classic.

The luminous traversal of Schoenberg's extraordinary late romantic see-saw sextet by America's first and greatest string quartet - with two reserves from the Hollywood orchestras where they all earned their pay - is exquisite. Indeed, the composer was so impressed he agreed to do the liner notes.

Pairing Argerich and Kremer up for the Beethoven violin sonatas is like tossing a match into a box of firecrackers. Beethoven would surely have smacked his Viennese thighs with hearty approval at their brazenly hairy ride.

For 150 years, Bach's cello suites - condemned for being dry - lay in obscurity. A teenage Casals found a copy in a second hand shop and unveiled them to an astonished world. The recorded testimony - over 60 years old - is a modern miracle.

Whole days, weeks and months have been lost to Beethoven's late quartets. Realising that there is a real world beyond these extraordinary musical narratives is hard to believe when in among the notes. In these instances, the quartets have become a religion, to be worshipped, not just listened to. The recorded shrine that most true believers return to again and again is the sixty-year-old EMI set from the peerless Busch Quartet, whose lively tone balances the play and profundity that infects every bar of these five final works to perfection.