Here are two discs of classical music, with one disc presenting one of classical music's greatest "warhorse" works, and the other presenting works that few today are likely to have heard. The former is a very fine recording that I'm glad to have heard; the latter is one of the best discs of early music I have heard in quite some time.

Taking the first disc, the works of Tchaikovsky for orchestra and solo violin, it's almost anticlimactic to give the recording high marks for execution. Michael Tilson Thomas has become one of the very greatest of conductors working today, Joshua Bell is one of the finest young virtuosi of the violin today, and the Berlin Philharmonic is, well, the Berlin Philharmonic. That this combination of musical forces produces a good recording is to be expected so much that one rather wishes they had, by sheer accident, produced a dud of a disc, just so that one could say something new about it.

As it is, the present recording yields a very fine rendition of the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto. One of the great virtuoso showpieces of the violin repertoire, the Concerto was nevertheless derided by the critics of Tchaikovsky's day as unplayable ("The violin is beaten black and blue", wrote Eduard Hanslick). Bell disproves that notion ably enough, producing his trademark rich tone and deft handling of the Concerto's intricate runwork. Michael Tilson Thomas and the Berlin Philharmonic provide excellent accompaniment in this live concert recording.

The couplings on the disc are also nicely handled, although the fact that they are relatively short and that there are only two make the disc's running time less generous than one might have hoped. I should also note that this is an SACD disc, but I cannot assess this aspect of the recording because I do not own an SACD player.

Classical listeners seeking a good recording of the main work here will be well served; more experienced listeners seeking an iconic musical experience should probably investigate other, older recordings of the same work.

The Tchaikovsky Concerto was premiered in 1881, more than 125 years ago. The works on Sacred Bridges date from two to three hundred years before that, and their texts -- each taken from the Psalms -- date more than two thousand years before the Tchaikovsky. Here is music from a very old tradition indeed.

Composers have been setting the Psalms to music literally for millennia. What makes the Sacred Bridges project interesting is that the settings recorded here derive not from one religious tradition, but from three: here are settings from the Jewish, Christian, and Islamic traditions. At a time when the world's three great monotheistic faiths are once again viewing each other with deep suspicion (and often outright hatred), this recording serves the valuable purpose of reminding us of the common threads in the three faiths that dominate just about all of Western history, and much of the history of the entire world.

The King's Singers is a group of vocalists from King's College, Cambridge, who since 1968 have dazzled the musical world with their pristine balance and intonation. Sarband is an instrumental band formed in 1986 by Dr. Vladimir Ivanoff, comprising musicians from Bulgaria, Turkey, Lebanon, Iraq, Sweden, Great Britain, Italy and Germany. Their focus is precisely on projects like the present recording: seeking the common threads between the musical traditions of the Islamic, Christian, and Judaic worlds. Most importantly, however, they are fine musicians, as their instrumental playing on Sacred Bridges demonstrates across every track -- and never moreso than on track seven, an instrumental improvisation between the members of the band that in the midst of this wonderfully exotic album takes us to someplace even deeper and more exotic.

Anyone with any interest in world music, or in religious music, or in early music -- or just music in general -- should seek this recording out. I can't recommend it highly enough.