GIFT GUIDE: Top 6 Classical Music Recordings to Buy in 2014

It's too late now to order a classical music CD or DVD for Christmas, but why not take the New Year as a cue to freshen up your musical tastes?

Here are some recent releases guaranteed to broaden your horizons, care of Reuters' European arts and lifestyle editor Michael Roddy:

I.: inspired by Romanian and Hungarian gypsy music heard in Paris during the composer's lifetime

II.: We are in the age of the countertenor

II.: The distinctly male voice probing a range where you expect to hear Renée Fleming may sound odd at first

III.: To know what the fuss is about for less

IV.: then Chinese keyboard wizard Lang Lang is the new model pianist

V.: and his affinity for the instrument shines through in these youthful works

VI. Back to Ravel for a gem of a DVD from Glyndebourne's 2012 season of the composer's two short operas, L'Heure Espagnole (The Spanish Hour) and L'enfant et les sortilèges (The Child and the Spells), both in new productions by the French director Laurent Pelly (FRA Musica FRA008). The Spanish-influenced piece is an early work that compares a wound-up clock mechanism to the erotic compulsions of humans. In the second, Ravel masterfully brings to life the French writer Colette's cracked fairytale in which a boy, sung here by French soprano Khatouna Gadelia, throws a tantrum in his room, breaks the crockery and tears the wallpaper. The distressed objects come alive and taunt him. It gets very weird and dark, like a story by Maurice Sendak or Roald Dahl, which is why it's so good. Not to be missed: The chastened lad singing out "Mama" at the end, and the singing trees bowing for the curtain call.