Performer: Slovak Philharmonic Choir

The Baden-Baden Easter Festival offers a memorable production of Pique Dame with excellent musical performances convincing in Leiser and Caurier's updating of the plot.

The venerable festival recaps and renews 100 years of Czechoslovak music with an outsized flourish from Slovak Philharmonic.

Semyon Bychkov turned in a magisterial account of Mussorgsky's rugged score, aided and abetted by some strong vocal performances.