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BEETHOVEN: THE LATE PIANO SONATAS, VOL. 1 (Dorian Recordings). Sonatas Nos. 28 and especially 29 (the "Hammerklavier") are immense in their emotional range and technical challenges. The contrapuntal writing is Olympian, the fugues exalted. Andrew Rangell possesses the intelligence and dexterity to reckon nobly with these humbling conceptions.
THE FATS WALLER PIANO SOLOS (Bluebird). There has never been a more joyous jazzman than this two-fisted stride pianist, whose artistry is brilliantly captured here.
TELEVISION
THE MAGIC FLUTE (PBS, June 19, 8 p.m. on most stations). Artist David Hockney designed this Metropolitan Opera production of Mozart, starring Kathleen Battle.
WITHOUT WARNING: THE JAMES BRADY STORY (HBO, June 20, 24). Beau Bridges brings grit and not too much sentimentality to the role of President Reagan's former press secretary, who was felled by a bullet meant for the President, and is now the symbolic leader of the nation's gun-control movement. The film's camp highlight, though, is Bryan Clark's hyperkinetic impersonation of Reagan.
ETCETERA
TEXAS FESTIVAL. A Lone Star hoedown at Washington's Kennedy Center, highlighting the Houston Ballet performing a Paul Taylor boogie set to Andrews Sisters hits. This week only.
NEW YORK CITY BALLET. Peter Martins' Ash continues his partnership with composer Michael Torke. Through June 30.
LE SAX HOT
SIDNEY BECHET: THE COMPLETE VICTOR MASTER TAKES (Bluebird). THE COMPLETE SIDNEY BECHET ON BLUE NOTE (available from Mosaic, 35 Melrose Place, Stamford, Conn. 06902). Born in New Orleans in 1897, clarinetist and soprano saxophonist Sidney Bechet was one of the most talented and influential jazz musicians who ever blew a horn. As Louis Armstrong did for the trumpet, Bechet turned the soprano sax into a powerful solo voice. If Armstrong went on to achieve greater fame, Bechet had the more interesting life: affairs with Josephine Baker, Bessie Smith and Tallulah Bankhead; deportation from Britain; gunfights in Paris; and finally, ascension to the status of a national hero in France, where he died in 1959. Along the way, the hot-tempered Creole managed to record hundreds of tunes, including such classics as Summertime, Strange Fruit and Petite Fleur. These two digitally remastered sets, both of them copiously documented and illustrated, contain the bulk of his U.S. recorded work.