Is the world ready for Balkan Trash Classical? For cover photos of long hair lifted up to reveal a dagger tattoo underneath? Apparently so -- Maksim is Croatian-born pianist Maksim Mrvica, now active in England after being discovered by another Croat, Tonci Huljic, who did arrangements for the crossover string quartet Bond, has achieved international success with audiences as far afield as Hong Kong and Indonesia.

A New World, recorded in 2005, gives an idea of why -- it's pretty garish, and it's not for everyone, but it stands apart from other British crossover experiments in its sheer audacity.

The heart of the program is a series of operatic melodies underlaid with heavy techno beats.

In the opening New World Concerto, based on Dvorák, Maksim trades themes and parts of them off with the orchestra (the Royal Philharmonic, whose founders may well be turning over in their graves), but usually the tunes are given to the orchestra, and Maksim ornaments them virtuosically.

Jump right in with Maksim's version of the Ride of the Valkyries (track 8), where he surrounds the basic motive with sweeping keyboard figures -- it's over the top, but then so is the original.

One can see why Asian audiences have taken to Maksim -- the music has the hyperdramatic quality of the scores of big Asian film dramas.

His version of "Dido's Lament" from Purcell's Dido and Aeneas will steamroll the sensibilities of anyone remotely familiar with the original, but taken as if it were part of the score for a big-budget Chinese drama it's remarkably successful, with a tragic mood that is undeniably overblown but varied enough not to be trite.

The originals are mostly quieter (although the Spanish-sounding nonsense background vocals on Mojito would be the exception); they are mostly composed by Huljic and are more conventionally sentimental.

But they are really moments of pause between the big arias, which do showcase a pianist with solid technique and which really, when you get down to it, come closer to the visceral appeal of the original material than do the sentimental class-climbing pretenses of many of Maksim's competitors.

Let the buyer beware, but let the buyer also give it a chance.