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Top 10 for Nov

3 Crossover Artists get Orange County Register Review

Here's Yuja Wang again, not in a little red dress, but fashionable all the same, in a halter-style top and long flowing skirt, the midriff bare, a come-hither look on her face. "YUJA," it says, in big letters across the front of the album. This is the way she's going to be sold, at least for a while, the sex kitten of classical music. We ought to take her seriously, though.

Yo-Yo Ma's latest recording (Sony Classical), with longtime collaborator pianist Kathryn Stott, is called "Songs from the Arc of Life." It's a perfectly pleasant affair, 19 tracks in all, beautiful tunes by Brahms, Dvorak, Faure, Gershwin, Kreisler, etc., beginning with the Bach/Gounod "Ave Maria" and ending with Schubert's "Ave Maria."

The Russian pianist Daniil Trifonov, 24, winner of both the Rubinstein and Tchaikovsky piano competitions and the object of critical hosannas the world over, gave one of the more amazing recitals your reviewer has ever heard earlier this year. It climaxed with a performance of all 12 of Liszt's "Transcendental Etudes," some of the most difficult pieces in the repertoire, dispatched with a blinding technique and musical verve hard to credit if you hadn't been there.

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