CLASSICAL PICKS

Requiem for a Chorus. The Philadelphia Singers are gone, but you can still hear them. The Best of Christmas on Logan Square, a CD of 17 selections conducted by David Hayes, features traditional carols as well as works of Gabrieli, Lauridsen, and Higdon. A recording of Randall Thompson's Requiem is slated for release in May. And for die-hard collectors, the group, as it winds down the company that operated the chorus, is offering a limited number of discs of America Swings, the Philadelphia Singers' first recording, under conductor Michael Korn from 1975, in music of Joplin, Gershwin, and Bernstein. Recordings are $15 and $20, and all proceeds go to pay outstanding expenses and bills related to the final dissolution of the organization. www.philadelphiasingers.org.

- Peter Dobrin

Into less-charted waters. That's where the latest Astral Artists recital is destined to go at 3 p.m. Sunday at the Trinity Center for Urban Life. Only a year out of the Curtis Institute, Chinese violinist Luosha Fang and keyboardist Ilya Poletaev are giving a recital that is framed by gentility - Bach's Sonata No. 4 for Violin and Harpsichord and Schubert's Fantasie for Violin and Piano - but that also sails into more turbulent seas in works by Elliott Carter, Alfred Schnittke and a new piece by Michael Djupstrom. Most intriguing, perhaps, is George Enescu's Sonata "Torso," the single movement of a 1911 work by a composer who wrote all too little. Information: 215-735-6999 or www.astralartists.org.

- David Patrick Stearns

If you loved the concert. The British choir Tenebrae reportedly left audiences floating a few inches above the ground following their concert at the Cathedral Basilica of SS. Peter and Paul in October, and the new disc of Brahms and Bruckner motets on the Signum Classics label may well do the same. The program is full of dark, chocolatey Germanic harmonies in a lot of infrequently heard works by Bruckner and some well-loved ones by Brahms, including his setting of the "Ave Maria" and a movement from A German Requiem. Roomy acoustics, inspiring organ accompaniment, and excellent recording quality conspire to make a most attractive package.   - D.P.S.

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