Serenade, with its inventive, witty, and ever-haunting thematic games, is much underrated. At its heart is ''Agathon'', the host of Plato's ficticious Symposium, his treatise on the nature of love inspiring six of Bernstein's finest minutes. Gidon Kremer's serene introspection here is something very special; the composer has no right to expect better. The CD transfer has a sonorous ring to it, the dryness of Tel Aviv's Mann Auditorium effectively disguised. Fancy Free is appreciably tighter and brasher as a recording and whilst the Israelis give this likeable score their best shot—as the Americans might have it—one sorely misses the New York Philharmonic's inbred swing. But who can pass up the unique opportunity of hearing the well-weathered singing (if that's the word) voice of Lenny himself wafting over from the juke box with a few bars of the blues ''Big Stuff''? It's the stuff of which collector's items are made.'