This trio of Korean-born sisters sits astride two marketing trends in classical music, turning heads both with their haute-couture duds (and good looks) and with their genre-bending unorthodoxy -- their concerts intersperse repertory standards with rock numbers, crossover material like Astor Piazzolla, and contemporary works, some composed for the group.

Ahn-Plugged, their new CD, strengthens both these aspects of their emerging identity.

On the cover, the sisters, known for rollerblading around lower Manhattan, gallivant across a city street carrying a white, graffiti-covered cello case.

Inside is an assortment of contemporary pieces, only one of them (Leonard Bernstein's youthful Trio of 1937) in more than one movement.

"Here," we learn from the notes, "different styles of music co-exist to be shared and experienced by all without any rigid rules." That means a bevy of Neo-Romantic pieces; Michael Nyman's The Heart Asks Pleasure First is already well known from its use in the art-film hit The Piano.

There are two works by Piazzolla, the Argentine tango-classical fusionist whose work is enjoying an extraordinary revival, an arrangement of a 1985 David Bowie recording made with the Pat Metheny Group, and works by Henji Bunch and Eric Ewazen that add percussion to the trio.

Ahn Trio

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1998 - 11 tracks

Dvorák, Suk & Schostakowitsch: Piano Trios - Ahn Trio

$5.99