Granda: La flor de la canela

Who knew that the solid, staid old Berlin Philharmonic had such a groovy group of swingers in its cello section? One of them plays the maracas during the rests in his part, others slap their instruments with abandon, and some of them even shout at appropriate moments: if this makes them sound like trainspotters letting their hair down, it's not meant to. This recording of South American and South American-inspired music is full of joy from beginning to end, and played with the kind of accuracy other ensembles only dream of. The mood ranges from sultry and sweaty (Kaiser-Lindemann's Brazilian Variations) through coolly intellectual (the Fugue from Bachianas Brasileiras No. 1) to pure sunshine (Burt Bacharach's "South American Getaway"). The arrangements are models of their kind, and the cellists respond to their challenges with bravura and passion--at times creating sounds remarkably like a bandonéon, at others producing perfect harmonics in octaves or just singing out with pure joy. Irresistibly seductive.