Two of Western Virginia's chamber-music mainstays mark anniversaries-- the 15th of Roanoke College's Kandinsky Trio and the 30th of the Garth Newel Music Center-- with new recordings this season.

The Kandinsky's "Trios in Foreign Lands" (Brioso 135) is a fascinating mixture of romantic and modern works.

The Heart of this recital sets Sergei Rachmaninoff's "Trio Elegaique" (1892) in sharp contrast with "Four Combinations for Three Instruments," a recently discovered piece by the American Modernist and musical experiment, Henry Cowell.

Joaquin Turina's "Circulio"; Frank Bridge's "Minatures"; "Gitane a Trois," the the Kandinsky's arrangement of a familiar gypsy melody; and the piece for which the disk is named, "In Foreign Lands" by the Chinese-American composer Chien-Tai Chen, sustain the creative tension between old and new, familiar and exotic throughout the album.

The Kandinsky Trio -- Pianist Elisabeth Bachelder, violinist Benedict Goodfriend and cellist Alan Weinstein -- projects this wide ranging program with natural expressiveness, a consistently sure grasp of very different musical idioms and a gratifying balance of spontaneity and refinement.