Debussy -- bracing or steamy

THROW a stack of new CDs in the air and they land, amid broken plastic, in pairs. Two pianists, one French, the other Macedonian, and both excellent, have very different takes on Debussy. In what may turn out to be the greatest complete recorded survey of the composer’s piano music yet, Jean-Efflam Bavouzet, in Volume 2 of the series on Chandos, turns to early, Romantic pieces, which he plays with such bracing clarity that hearing them feels like jumping into an icy pond after an hour in the sauna. Simon Trpceski, in some of Debussy’s favorite pieces for an EMI recital disc, opts for the hot house, where he makes perfumed, exquisitely tinted orchids bloom.

Wu Man, a musician of rare eloquence, has revolutionized the pipa, a Chinese lute, in the West. In 1997, Lou Harrison wrote her a Pipa Concerto that is his last great piece, and now it gets a great recording as part of “Tradition and Transformations of Silk Road Chicago,” which the Chicago Symphony has released. Miguel Harth-Bedoya conducts and the results are sumptuous, the disc’s principal pleasure -- but not the only one. Yo-Yo Ma plays -- fabulously -- Bloch’s “Schelomo” and joins world musicians in one of his Silk Road commissions. For some reason, the CD concludes with Prokofiev’s “Scythian Suite,” splashily conducted by Alan Gilbert in his first recording with a major American orchestra.

Four years ago, Terry Riley wrote a wondrous 42-minute work for Wu and the Kronos Quartet. Now released on Nonesuch, “The Cusp of Magic” is uncategorizable. Many styles and many cultures get along joyfully. Riley’s gift is for warmth, and a glow from this CD lingers in the room long after the sound system and the lights are turned off.

Dante has attracted musicians for hundreds of years; he still does. Daniel Barenboim gave a Liszt recital at La Scala in Milan, Italy, last May with the “Dante Sonata” as the centerpiece, and Warner Classics recorded it live. Barenboim spends much of his time conducting opera these days, but everything about him has become operatic, whether it is his political engagement with Palestinians or his piano playing. The “Dante Sonata” is rapt and dramatic, but elsewhere he can be the model of nuance. Only a man of both the theater and the keyboard can achieve his visceral approach to Verdi’s opera transcriptions.

Charles Wuorinen’s “Dante Trilogy” is not opera but dance, written for New York City Ballet in the mid ‘90s and now released in chamber versions on Naxos. Canto after canto flies by in this 72-minute whirlwind tour of the “Divine Comedy.” The music is busy, intricate, progressive but full of incident and not as intimidating as Wuorinen’s reputation as a hard-core Modernist might make the score seem. The performances, with Oliver Knussen conducting, are a major attraction.

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-- Mark Swed