Doing It Their Way.

It's a big issue in the opera world: Renee Fleming's singing of bel canto. Fleming, of course, is just about the most sumptuous soprano around, prized particularly for her singing of Strauss (meaning Richard, not Johann, although she's no slouch in operetta either). Many people, however, have reservations about her forays into bel canto -- the music of Donizetti, Bellini, and suchlike. The accusation is that she's not correct or strict enough -- that she is, in a word, too Straussy.

I've done a little of this accusing myself. It is certainly true that Fleming is somewhat unorthodox in bel canto; but she doesn't seem to mind. We have a tendency to be dogmatic in this area of opera: Anyone who departs from perceived correctness is condemned as a charlatan. But there's more than one way to skin a bel canto cat. And if Eileen Farrell had "a right to sing the blues," then surely Renee Fleming has a right to sing Bellini.

And she certainly has. The diva asked the Metropolitan Opera to put on Il Pirata for her, and the company obliged -- Fleming is a star worth pleasing. That Bellini opera had never been staged at the Met, and had been known primarily as a Maria Callas vehicle. Fleming has proven smashing in this production, and, at the same time, she has an album out entitled Bel Canto, which is at the top of the charts (classical version).

As I've written before, Fleming has a plush Cadillac of a voice -- she cannot turn it into a zippy Ford Fiesta overnight. But hers is an agile, adaptable, maneuverable Cadillac. She almost always sings richly, but her work is also clean, accurate, and plenty correct. Technically, she can do anything -- can fly with any of the bird-like voices out there. Many will find (and have found) her singing on this new recording -- from Decca, by the way -- too Romantic, too free, too luxuriant. But it is undeniably first-rate singing, and rare singing, and beautiful singing -- in other words, bel canto.

Soon, Fleming is to come out with a jazz album. Yes, she has "a right," and she has the ability too, in everything she tries. Callas liked to say, "I'm not a lyric soprano, I'm not a coloratura soprano, I'm not a dramatic soprano -- I'm a soprano, damn it." So's Renee Fleming.

-- Midori is now over 30. Isn't that shocking? It seems like yesterday when she was a child prodigy, wowing people on the Johnny Carson show and on stages throughout the world. She is, of course, a one-named wonder, like the late British pianist Solomon, and like her contemporary, Kennedy, the violinist formerly known as Nigel Kennedy.

One name or two, Midori is an impressive musician, and her new album, with the pianist Robert McDonald, is all-French: the sonatas of Poulenc and Debussy, and the Sonata No. 1 in D Minor by Saint-Saens. (The record comes from Sony.) Midori is a knowing "French violinist," as she is a violinist generally. She has not only talent and "fingers" -- raw technique -- but a probing musical intelligence. She is also known for meticulous preparation, which shows in virtually every performance she gives.

It's especially good, in this recording, to hear the Poulenc sonata, which is normally slighted in favor of the other two -- and in favor of the Faure and Franck sonatas. (We're talking the French repertoire here.) The piece is pure Poulenc, with its angularity, melodies, and punch. Midori's playing is crisp, and she is willing to be raw, when necessary, rather than pretty. McDonald is a full partner. Indeed, the Poulenc is as much a piano piece as a violin sonata.

Poulenc wrote a lovely slow movement, as could have been expected from a master of song. Midori -- in the best tradition of French playing -- renders it exquisitely but not preciously. In the final movement -- Tres anime -- she is both incisive and shimmering. These pages are like cut jewels, and, again, thoroughly Poulenc-like.

Today, Midori is part of a wealth of violinists who are in their 20s or 30s: Joshua Bell, Sarah Chang, Gil Shaham, Maxim Vengerov. It's nice to know that this wunderkind has turned into a wunderadult -- it doesn't always work that way.

-- For some of us, Alberto Ginastera is a delectation. An Argentinean composer, he lived from 1916 to 1983, and left many pleasing works, including two piano concertos. Ginastera was a bit of a nationalist -- South America is never far from his music -- but he was in most respects a thoroughly modern composer, though more talented than most.

It so happens that Ginastera has a champion in Gisele Ben-Dor. She is - - if you will forgive me -- a chick conductor, the director of the Santa Barbara Symphony in California. Women conductors are quite rare, almost as rare as female bass-baritones. It may well be that Ben-Dor is the finest female conductor in the world (although, as Bill Buckley once said, when confronted with the assertion that Lillian Hellman was America's foremost woman playwright, "Maybe so, but isn't that on the order of celebrating the tallest building in Wichita, Kansas?").

Ben-Dor was born and raised in Uruguay, and she studied in Israel and the U.S. (including under Leonard Bernstein). She champions not only Ginastera, but other Latin American composers, among them Silvestre Revueltas, a Mexican. She has made two all-Ginastera albums, of which the second -- originally released in 1999 -- has just been recirculated by BMG/Conifer Records. Done with the London Symphony Orchestra, it consists of two complete ballets, Panambi (1937) and Estancia (1941). Two ballets -- even complete -- do not a Ginastera flowering make. But this album is a happy contribution.

-- Do we have a "name" organist today? Not really, unless it is Marie- Claire Alain, still going strong in her middle 70s. Virgil Fox and E. Power Biggs are but memories, except on recordings. (By the way, "E. Power Biggs" must be one of the strangest and most memorable names of the 20th century.) We do have, however, several top-notch players, including Michael Murray, who is a noted scholar/writer as well. Murray is an American, working in Cincinnati, but he had French training, with none other than Marcel Dupre. Thus, Murray is a continuer of that tradition. His latest CD -- on Telarc -- is devoted to the works of Dupre, Franck, and Widor; the organ he plays is that of St. Sulpice in Paris.

Dupre himself was organist at St. Sulpice, for almost 40 years; before him, Widor was (having beaten out Franck for the job). Albert Schweitzer, according to Murray, judged the church's organ "the most beautiful in the world." Murray is clearly an authority on this music, but, more important, he has the ability to execute what he knows. His playing is satisfying at every level.

Of course, the organ is a difficult instrument to capture on record -- there's no substitute for actually sitting in the pews. But technology has come a long way, and we're getting there.

-- The Testament label is true to its name: It provides recordings from the past that deserve perpetuation. Lately, the company has given us two albums of special distinction. The first is called Baroque Transcriptions, and features Ida Haendel, with the pianist Geoffrey Parsons. Haendel was -- is, I should say -- a Polish-born violinist who spent much of her career in England; Parsons was an excellent Australian-British accompanist best known for his work with singers.

The music on this disc is very much out of style: passe, smirked at, disreputable. The "originalists" and purists have taken over. But there is much to be said for it, and Haendel, through her playing, says it well. One of the items here is Corelli's "La Folia," transcribed by the master violin transcriber himself, Fritz Kreisler. It is from this piece that Rachmaninoff gets his theme for the famous Corelli Variations. Haendel also plays a transcription -- of a Nardini sonata - - by Carl Flesch, her teacher. (She also studied with the great Romanian violinist and composer George Enescu.) Haendel is, among other things, a link to a golden past.

Her playing will obviously be too Romantic for some (shades of Renee Fleming). But there is not a vulgar note in these performances. Ida Haendel is tasteful, elegant, and self-assured, exploiting this literature for all it's worth, which, again, is a lot.

Also from Testament is an album reviving a figure essentially forgotten today. That is Germaine Thyssens-Valentin, a Dutch-born pianist who had more or less a French career. As a teenager at the Paris Conservatory, she won the Premier Prix. A few years later, however, she got married, and spent the next 25 years raising her children. After this hiatus, she resumed her career.

In it, Thyssens-Valentin paid particular attention to the music of Faure -- who had been director of the conservatory during her student days. The present album is devoted entirely to this composer, featuring an assortment of works, including a batch of Impromptus. We see that Thyssens-Valentin had many virtues as a pianist: technique (and an easy one), color (or rather, colors), and true refinement. She is modest without being mousy. She plays with great clarity, too, proving that Faure need not be mush. In fact, we can hear in this playing the composer's national forebears: Rameau, Couperin, and other masters of the French Baroque.

Germaine Thyssens-Valentin is a rediscovery.

-- Finally, a little bit of fun (not that the above isn't fun): Ian Bostridge, the English tenor, has come out with a CD of . . . Noel Coward (on EMI).

Bostridge has sung -- and recorded -- everything else, particularly everything that comes from England: Why not Coward? The program is divided into "Songs from the Twenties" and "Songs from the Thirties." These numbers contain a surprising variety: Some are novelty songs, and some are quite a bit better than that. All have an effect. Coward was a clever composer, and, as a lyricist, of course: beyond clever. He has a stylish and devoted interpreter in Ian Bostridge. Seldom has the old smoothie been treated so well.