Scott Cantrell

Dallas may not have the musical renown of, say, Vienna or New York. But these three CDs certainly speak well for the area's musical assets.

Jaap van Zweden had conducted only one weekend of concerts here when the Dallas Symphony Orchestra named him music director. But if anyone questioned the choice, doubts were laid to rest with the Dutch conductor's two all-Beethoven concerts last November.

From those performances the DSO has issued a CD of the Fifth and Seventh symphonies. Laurie Shulman's program notes include incisive comments from DSO musicians.

Vividly recorded by engineers Roy Cherryhomes and George Gilliam, these electric accounts fairly leap out of the loudspeakers. But in addition to visceral excitement there's a plethora of elegant detail in balance and taper. It's hard to imagine the second movement of the Fifth Symphony more elegantly phrased; the music actually seems to inhale and exhale.

Under studio conditions, as opposed to a live concert, the drive might be a hairbreadth less headlong here and there, notably in the finale of the Fifth. The violins expose an occasional rough edge, while timpani could use more presence and focus. But there was no patch-up session for fine touches, and you can tell there's as much electricity from the audience as from the musicians onstage.

The DSO has all but kept the CD a secret for at least a couple of months, when it could have been pushing them at concerts. Even tracking them down on the orchestra's clunky Web site takes some doing. (See link below.) And the $20 price tag does seem excessive.

The second CD features oboist Erin Hannigan, a member of the DSO since 2001 and named principal oboe last fall. Also on the adjunct faculty of Southern Methodist University's Meadows School of the Arts, she has a warm, liquescent tone and expressive eloquence.

Don't let her lineup of 20th- and 21st-century music scare you. Everything is hearer-friendly, even University of Texas composer Dan Welcher's oboe-and- percussion Firewing, which was inspired by a poem about a moth that flies too close to a flame.

Simon Sargon, a veteran SMU faculty member, is a warmly expressive pianist, as well as a deft composer. His Homage to Hafiz evokes the 14th-century Persian poet in fragrant "Eastern"-sounding music. His Haas Trio memorializes the late broadcaster Karl Haas in its middle movement, but overall the style is Frenchified neoclassicism.

This is music you could imagine coming from the pen of Poulenc or Milhaud, and the same could be said of a sonata by Henri Dutilleux and the Dialogues of British composer Paul Patterson. From another Englishman, Thomas Dunhill, comes Friendship's Garland, a suite of miniatures in the English country-dance-suite manner. Working in SMU's Caruth Auditorium, Mr. Cherryhomes and Mr. Gilliam again supply pleasing sonics.

Violinist Shannon Lee, Canadian-born but a Texan since age 2, is a protégé of DSO principal associate concertmaster Jan Mark Sloman. She was all of 12 when she made her orchestral debut with the DSO, in the summer of 2005. (Check out her site: www.shannonlee violin.com.)

For her CD debut (on the respected Telarc label, no less), she's joined by pianist Pamela Mia Paul, a professor at the University of North Texas. An hour's worth of violin encores played by a 15-year-old wouldn't immediately leap to my CD player, but Ms. Lee is a dazzler. No technical challenge seems beyond her, and her shining tone is gorgeous.

The deeper values of the Brahms Sonatensatz seem just beyond her, but listen how expressively she shapes Elgar's Salut d'amour, complete with juicy and stylish slides, and the lyric middle section of the Kreisler Tambourin chinois.

Beethoven

A-Symphonies Nos. 5, 7. Dallas Symphony Orchestra, Van Zweden (DSO, available at the Symphony Store in the Meyerson Symphony Center or at http://dallassymphony.my shopify.com/)

A-From Hafiz to Firewing. Hannigan, Sargon, Walzel, Florio, Lang (Crystal)

A-Introducing Shannon Lee. Paul (Telarc, to be released Tuesday)

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