Music: Classic&Choice

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Schubert: String Quintet in C major (Melos Quartet, Cellist Mstislav Rostropovich; Deutsche Grammophon). This is a near-perfect recording of Schubert's greatest chamber work. The playing and the balance between instruments are all but flaw less; Rostropovich's singing bass line is outstanding, and the gay third movement scherzo is joyous as a Highland fling.

Brahms: Four Serious Songs, Two Songs for Alto and Viola, Eight Lieder (Mezzo Janet Baker, Pianist André Previn; Angel). Set to biblical passages about death, suffering and love, Brahms' late songs have a stately quality that Baker's dark, resonant voice conveys perfectly. Her low notes thrill with their sad, serene beauty.

Puccini: La Fanciulla del West (Soprano Carol Neblett, Tenor Placido Domingo, Baritone Sherrill Milnes; Chorus and Orchestra of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, Zubin Mehta, conductor; Deutsche Grammophon; 3 LPs). Fanciulla (1910) is a second-rate Italian opera comically posing as a shoot-'em-up thriller. Neblett makes a dramatic frontier heroine. Domingo, as her lover, sings everyone else under the bar, and Milnes is dashingly villainous. With Mehta in the saddle, chorus and orchestra ride smartly home.

Monteverdi's Contemporaries (The Early Music Consort of London, David Mun-row, conductor; Angel). A fascinating col lection of sacred and profane music by nine little-known Italian composers of the 16th and early 17th centuries, performed on such authentic instruments as sackbut, recorder and shawm. As usual with the Consort, the playing (and in the mot ets, singing) is of the highest quality.

Prokofiev: Ivan the Terrible (Mezzo Irina Arkhipova, Baritone Anatoly Mokrenko, Narrator Boris Morgunov, Ambrosian Chorus and Philharmonia Orchestra, Riccardo Muti, conductor; Angel; 2 LPs). This oratorio, arranged from Prokofiev's score for Eisenstein's two-part Ivan the Terrible film, makes splendid melodrama. Muti conducts a dashing blend of ominous march rhythms, pagan-sounding brass flourishes and pealing Russian bells.

Mahler: Symphony No. 1 (Boston Symphony Orchestra, Seiji Ozawa, conductor; Deutsche Grammophon) Symphony No. 6 (Berlin Philharmonic, Herbert von Karajan, conductor; Deutsche Grammophon; 2 LPs). Ozawa's intensity is ideal for the extreme contrasts of the stormily triumphant first symphony. Conducting the grim, immense sixth, Karajan draws amazing color from the orchestra. The slow third movement is a lovely idyl amidst the gloom .