Byron Janis Plays Chopin.

ROUND and round she goes, and every year we are presented with new Wunderkinder or their adolescent counterparts. The state of musical instruction being what it is today, a young talent with digital dexterity and determined parents can be taught to play well enough to become the latest "find." This is not to detract from one young violinist, Leila Josefowicz. At 17, she cannot be considered a Wunderkind -- though perhaps we can neologize by characterizing her as a Wunderjungling. Miss Josefowicz has all the proper qualifications. For Solo, her first album in her own right (Philips 446 700-2), she has recorded works of considerable technical difficulty -- Bartok's Sonata for Solo Violin and a Paganini show-off piece -- as well as less challenging works for solo violin. The Paganini is, like everything else he wrote, empty and designed to display little more than finger-busting challenges. Miss Josefowicz sails through it, dominating the devils who reside in every violin, and displaying remarkable technical agility. The Bartok is real music, and she shows more than usual understanding of its expressionism.

If we are looking for a real Wunderkind and Wunderjungling, we can turn to Frederic Chopin and the gorgeous panoply of his work. At eight he had made a sensational debut as a pianist; by the time he reached his twenties, as a composer he had gone beyond an outpouring of music for the piano to produce works such as the Piano Concertos No. 1 in E Minor and No. 2 in F Minor -- more piano than concerto, but beguiling works in the "romantic" style then in the ascendant. Schumann would call him the "boldest poetic spirit of the time" --effeminate, neurotic, dandyish, ironic, courageous in facing the death that came to him when he was 39, and a pianist of remarkable passion and virtuosity. The music he composed, blazing no musical trails but emotionally and melodically rich, had a unique loveliness and spontaneity -- though he labored in setting it onto paper. That seeming spontaneity is evident in a recording by Antal Dorati conducting the London Symphony (Mercury 434 374-2). As soloist, Gina Bachauer is excellent, her free-wheeling style particularly suited to respond to the composer. Byron Janis Plays Chopin (EMI 56196), an album of the waltzes, nocturnes, and mazurkas which made up much of Chopin's work, offers a more contemplative traversal, and a more sensitive unbuttoning. The touch, so important in a Chopin performance, is there.

The Beethoven piano sonatas are, in a way, a Scylla and Charybdis for soloists. On the one hand there is the scored music, and on the other the recordings of every musician since the phonograph was invented -- as well as the tradition of those who came before. I know of only two pianists who have survived the Appassionata and made of it a coherent work: Rudolf Serkin and Paul Badura-Skoda. Many otherwise great pianists have run their ships aground on the "unplayable" last sonatas because they have gone to sea on a modern concert grand. These sonatas are very playable on the piano for which Beethoven wrote them -- but this is a secret only Paul Badura-Skoda seems to have discovered.

Then there is Alfred Brendel. He has been a kind of utility outfielder of the Beethoven sonatas. If you cannot find a recording of this or that sonata by your favorite pianist, there is one by Alfred Brendel. I turned to his Piano Sonatas Opus 10 (Philips 446 664-2) hoping to find a pianist moyen sensuel for sonatas much touted as being the precursors of the powerful Beethoven style which produced the Fifth Symphony and later works. Brendel plays a modern concert grand, which gives too much brilliance -- but then so do most other pianists. Brendel seems to feel that he must give us something new in the Adagio of the first of this sonata cluster. He plays a few measures and then there is silence, during which you fuss with your stereo controls. But he comes on again for a few measures and, once more, silence. Nevertheless, his performance is generally satisfying and perceptive.

Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky has always been the victim of stupid criticism. In his lifetime, Eduard Hanslick would write that "we see wild and vulgar faces, we hear curses, we smell bad brandy" in his scores. In later times, he was treated with a degree of condescension, as if his great appeal was something to be held against him. Yet his music was always melodically rich and felicitously tied to dance -- and it had a vitality that transcended what faults the critics could find. His Symphony No. 4 in F Minor was written after a mental collapse and attempted suicide, consequences of the break-up of his marriage to a nymphomaniacal and unintelligent woman, which he had entered into in an effort to eradicate his homosexuality. Critics immediately marked it as "gloomy" and "despairing" -- judgments that bear little relation to the score. There is some pathos here and there, but rhythmic themes, serene melodic statements, and buoyant passages mark this symphony -- to me the most engaging of Tchaikovsky's six. Antal Dorati, conducting the London Symphony, makes the most of these qualities, for he is not afraid to let the music speak for itself without hindrance from the still-maundering critics (Mercury 434 373-2).

Lyrichord, which specializes in early music, has sent me three of its recent issues: Airs & Duets of Purcell (LEMS 8024), Echoes of Jeanne d'Arc (LEMS 8025), and Love Letters from Italy (LEMS 8026). Of these, the Echoes -- which has no real connection with the Maid of Orleans, and consists of Reginaldus Liebert's Missa de Beata Virgine -- should be the most rewarding. It represents that Mary worship which grew out of the celebration of courtly love and swept Europe -- for Mary represents perhaps the most sublime aspect of Christianity, and its "precious joy." Liebert's Beata Virgine combines both a Proper and the Ordinary of the Mass, in a polyphonic style known as Flamboyant Gothic. It is the purity of these early voices -- celebrated by the Schola Discantus under Kevin Moll --which touches one, for it is in a sense unspoken prayer set to music.

The Love Letters, which takes its title from Monteverdi's Letera Amorosa, one of the works in this collection, has more general appeal, as its subtitle, Seventeenth-Century Virtuoso Love Songs, might indicate. As polyphony, in which all voices had equal importance, moved to monody, the virtuoso performer emerged. In this recording -- featuring the fine countertenor Drew Minter and the Artek ensemble directed by Gwendolyn Toth -- are the lovely and swinging songs of Monteverdi and his contemporaries. But to this there are added three works by Frescobaldi, one of the great improvisers of his time, who was responsible for what have been described as seventeenth-century jam sessions, in which he and other musicians collectively improvised on the melodies of their times as twentieth-century jazz musicians would do -- and at St. Peter's, of all places.

Of the Purcell, que podemos decir? In his day, and it was a short one, he was called the Orpheus Britannicus. A brief quotation from the foreword to a collection of his vocal music sums up: "The Author's extraordinary Tallent in all sorts of Music, is sufficiently known; but he was particularly admir'd for his Vocal, having a peculiar Genius to Express the Energy of English Words, whereby he mov'd the Passions as well as caus'd Admiration in all his Auditors." With his death and that of his contemporaries, English music died, perhaps never quite having recovered from Oliver Cromwell's knee to the groin. Countertenor Jeffrey Dooley, tenor Howard Crook, the other singers, and the instrumentalists do very, very right by these songs.