![King Crimson - Larks’ Tongues in Aspic (40th Anniversary Edition) (1973/2023) [High Fidelity Pure Audio Blu-Ray Disc]](https://imghd.xyz/images/2024/05/12/138741_front.md.jpg)
Chor des Bayerischen Rundfunks & Ivan Repušić – Giuseppe Verdi: I Lombardi alla Prima Crociata (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 02:05:21 minutes | 1,20 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © BR-Klassik
Ivan Repušić made his debut as principal conductor of the Munich Radio Orchestra in September 2017 with Giuseppe Verdi’s “Luisa Miller”. It was followed by “I due Foscari” in October 2018 and “Attila” in October 2019 (the complete recordings have already been released by BR-KLASSIK on CD 900323, 900328 and 900330). His successful cycle of early masterpieces by the Italian opera composer continues with the recent concert performance on April 23, 2023 of Verdi’s stage work “I Lombardi” – also at the Prinzregententheater in Munich. Authentic fluidity and vocal splendour are provided here once again by outstanding performers and the Bavarian Radio Chorus. The Munich Radio Orchestra plays under the direction of Ivan Repuŝić. – This highlight of Munich’s musical life from the early part of this year has now been released by BR-KLASSIK as a double CD.
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Catrin Finch and Aoife Ni Bhriain – Double You (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 46:52 minutes | 449 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © bendigedig
Dublin native Aoife Ni Bhriain is one of her generation’s most versatile and gifted violinists, a dazzling musician who commands both the classical world and her Irish traditional heritage – From across the Irish Sea and the west coast of Wales, harpist Catrin Finch has also built an impressive classical career and ventured into uncharted musical territory, most notably through her international award-winning collaborations – Double You, their debut album as a duo, features an exquisite collection of new compositions that draw inspiration from various genres, taking listeners on a captivating journey on the wings of the bees across the Irish Sea and inspired by the cultures of their home countries.
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Caroline Fischer – Magical Christmas Fantasies (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 01:13:08 minutes | 561 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Genuin
The internationally renowned pianist Caroline Fischer has put together an evocative holiday gift with her new GENUIN CD. For the recording, she sought out old and new Christmas melodies, well-known and unknown, and combined them to form a harmonious whole. Included are treasures such as Otto von Walden’s tender fantasy on “Es ist ein Ros entsprungen” and Gustav Lange’s enchanting version of “Silent Night” – some of these windfalls have been recorded on CD for the first time. Thoughtfully curated and recorded to the highest standard, the only thing really missing is the wrapping paper!
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Brian Auger’s Oblivion Express – Straight Ahead (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 37:15 minutes | 450 MB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Soul Bank Music
Disappointing release compared to its predecessor, Closer to It. Still, side one kicks off nicely with a typical Auger groove on “Beginning Again,” then glides into a smooth, lyrical version of Wes Montgomery’s “Bumpin’ on Sunset.” The album has a nice sound, but the material is inferior to previous Oblivion Express albums.
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Bobby Previte & Ray Anderson – Double Trouble (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 45:18 minutes | 444 MB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Double Moon Records
Versatile jazz trombonist Ray Anderson in duet with drummer Bobby Previte.
Growing up in Chicago and influenced from early youth by the whole spectrum of jazz history from New Orleans to the innovations of the AACM as well as by Chicago Blues, Motown, R&B, folk singers of the sixties and rock bands, Ray Anderson started his apprenticeship with Anthony Braxton in the 1970s and realized that music must always be a component of life, not the least in the bands of Barry Altschul and Charlie Haden. With the Slickaphonics, he combined the avant-garde sound of New York with biting funk, and he showed with BassDrumBone that formal strictness and subtle humor do not have to stand in the way. To this day, he has retained a sound in which the canon of tradition is broken down faced with the pulse of the times.
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Bart Van Oort – Nocturnes from 19th Century Russia, Vol. 1 (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:04:23 minutes | 1,01 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Brilliant Classics
This recording, along with the forthcoming Vol.2, represents a first, comprehensive anthology of the Russian nocturne in its nearly two-hundred-year development. Some nocturnes are recorded here for the first time. The earliest Russian nocturnes were composed by Mikhail Glinka (1804–1857) and owe a debt to his teacher, the Irish composer John Field. The first, in E flat, was written in 1828 before his first trip to Italy. His Nocturne in F minor ‘La Séparation’, written at the height of his career, is styled like a ‘romance’ (song) without words. Karl Eduard Hartknoch (1796–1834) made his debut in 1816 as a concert pianist in Leipzig. In 1824 he moved to Russia, first to St. Petersburg and then to Moscow where he worked as a music teacher. He left a considerable number of piano compositions, including two concertos and the three Nocturnes Op.8. Anton Rubinstein (1829–1894) was a key figure in the history of Russian music, the first of the nation’s composers whose works for solo piano embodied the same serious artistic ideas as his symphonies and chamber music. He wrote eleven Nocturnes, two of them for piano four hands. The two Nocturnes by Piotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840–1893) were written in the 1870s and are regarded as real jewels of Russian music. Tchaikovsky was interested in the subtle movements of the human soul, and like his symphonic and operatic works, his nocturnes abound with the heartfelt poetry of everyday life. Alexander Scriabin (1872–1915) was famous during his lifetime as a piano virtuoso, known for performing his own music. Scriabin wrote the majority of his works for the piano, and the two Nocturnes Op.5 reveal the influence of Frederic Chopin (his model during his early years). While not the first, the Nocturne for the Left Hand in D Flat is perhaps the greatest 19th-century masterpiece written for the left hand. Konstantin Antipov (1859–1927) was a member of the Belyaev Group. He graduated from Rimsky-Korsakov’s composition class at the St Petersburg Conservatory in 1886. Antipov is the author of a symphonic allegro, piano pieces (including two nocturnes), romances and other works. Alexander Glazunov (1865–1936) was an outstanding composer, conductor, educator, and social activist. He worked at the St Petersburg Conservatory for almost 30 years, directing it for more than 20. His style is characterized by attention to texture, harmonic sumptuousness and clarity of melodic lines. Vasily Kalinnikov (1866–1900) lived a short but eventful and creative life. His most significant output was orchestral: symphonies, intermezzos and incidental music for Tolstoy’s Tsar Boris. He wrote just seven works for the piano in the 1890s. His impressionistic Nocturne in F-sharp minor resembles lyrical miniatures in the spirit of Tchaikovsky.
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The Isley Brothers – 3+3 (1973) [Reissue 2001]
PS3 Rip | SACD ISO | DSD64 2.0 & DST64 5.1 > 1-bit/2.8224 MHz | 39:11 minutes | Full Scans included | 3,35 GB
or FLAC 2.0 (converted with foobar2000 to tracks) 24bit/88,2 kHz | 38:53 minutes | Scans included | 815 MB
Features Stereo and Multichannel Surround Sound | Genre: Soul, R&B
As influential in its own way as early ’70s efforts by Sly and the Family Stone, Stevie Wonder, Curtis Mayfield, and Marvin Gaye, the Isley Brothers’ 3+3 took black music to the next level. Combining frontline vocalists O’Kelly, Ronald, and Rudolph with the instrumental chops of younger brothers Ernie and Marvin, plus brother-in-law Chris Jasper, the group broke out with the smoking single “That Lady,” featuring Ernie’s Hendrixian guitar. They followed it up with some soulful reworkings of rock songs of the moment (which, as luck would have it, all turned into certified classics), including the Doobie Brothers’ “Listen to the Music,” Seals and Crofts’s “Summer Breeze,” and James Taylor’s “Don’t Let Me Be Lonely Tonight.” It’s hard to imagine now how daring a strategy that was at the time, but the results sounds as fine today as ever.
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Annie Ross – Sings Handful Of Songs (1963/2018)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 36:07 minutes | 687 MB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Everest Records
By 1963, Annie Ross had permanently moved back to England and had started working more as an actress than as a singer. This interesting set (reissued by DCC as an audiophile CD) features Ross backed by an orchestra arranged and conducted by Johnnie Spence. The obvious high point is one of the darkest and scariest versions of “Love For Sale” ever recorded; Ross’ desperate-sounding rendition is haunting. Otherwise, she performs a variety of standards in lightly swinging fashion, not scatting or using vocalese but instead working on interpreting the lyrics. Other highlights include “All of You,” “Nature Boy,” “Like Someone in Love” and “Limehouse Blues.” This worthy set was also put out on CD by the Fresh Sound label.
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Matmos – Return to Archive (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 41:18 minutes | 682 MB | Genre: Electronic
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Smithsonian Folkways Recordings
In 1948, Moses Asch founded Folkways Records with a self-proclaimed mandate to record the sounds of the entire world. From the Sounds of North American Frogs to Speech After the Removal of the Larynx, Folkways documented the audible nooks and crannies of existence on hundreds of LPs produced by field recordists, scientists, and experimentalists probing the margins of the human soundscape. Seventy-five years later, electronic music duo Matmos have diced, looped, stretched, and recontextualized these recordings on their new album Return to Archive, which was assembled entirely from the so-called non-musical sounds released on Folkways. On just the album’s first track, dolphins, beetles, telephones, humans stretching the limits of their vocal cords, a shortwave radio, and metal balers co-mingle in a fantasia of sound both everyday and extraordinary. Each track on Return to Archive morphs its source material into something completely unexpected, honoring and expanding on Folkways’ legacy of sonic exploration. Featuring Evicshen and Aaron Dilloway.
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Martin Klett – Debussy, Préludes I & Crumb, Makrokosmos I (2020/2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 01:17:09 minutes | 595 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Deutsche Grammophon GmbH, Berlin
The music critic Emile Vuillermoz wrote about the pianist Debussy: “No one like him could transform a dissonant chord into a small, bronze or silver bell whose harmonic sound spreads out in all four directions.” Martin Klett’s interpretation is hardly inferior to this, although he chooses much more cautious tempi than the composer. The magical sound of the Préludes is, however, clearly sharpened by this. This aspect connects Debussy’s cycle with that of the American composer George Crumb. In the first volume of Makrokosmos, dedicated to the signs of the zodiac, the focus is not on the astronomical dimension, but on the astrological. In this sense, Crumb’s Makrokosmos is also a collection of character pieces, as developed in a more romantic sense by Robert Schumann in his piano works in the 19th century.
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Marie-Paule Belle – Un soir entre mille (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 38:45 minutes | 395 MB | Genre: Chanson, French Pop
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Universal Music Division Label Fontana Distribution Deal
Twelve years after her previous album, Marie Paule Belle has returned to the studio to record 15 new titles in piano voice. This new opus ‘Un soir entre mille’ delivers autobiographical, funny or sentimental songs.
The texts are by Marie-Paule Belle, by Isabelle Mayereau. Its longtime authors, Françoise Mallet-Joris and Michel Grisolia, were also invited to this great comeback and their lyrics, although written a few years ago, are still relevant as ‘Native Country’ (song covered by Souad Massi in his album Oumniya) or ‘Say yes, say no’ on the virtual world. The artist tells himself, without precedent, in music about his story with Françoise Mallet-Joris in ‘Good weather in Saint-Germain’‘ ‘One evening between a thousand’, about his family ‘With you, I often laughed’‘ ‘He listened to people’s hearts’ or ‘Little brother’ and evokes his childhood in ‘Au bois de buis’. His great friend Serge Lama signs a poignant text with ‘The shadow of his dog’.
All the music is by Marie-Paule Belle. Her voice has become more serious and suave over the years, her piano draws her melodies with finesse and elegance. She opens her jewel case of memories and feelings where time stops to let us savor this confidential atmosphere. This is for sure his most personal album!
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Magdalene Harer, Anne Bierwirth, Tobias Hunger, Markus Flaig – Gregor Joseph Werner: Vol. III: Masses and Motets (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:15:31 minutes | 1,42 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © audite Musikproduktion
An impressive continuation of the documentation of Gregor Joseph Werner’s oeuvre, showing Haydn’s predecessor at the Esterhazy court as a pioneer in musical development.Gregor Joseph Werner was by no means a mere minor master preceding Haydn – this was already impressively shown by the previous recordings in this series. Now the newly acquired picture of him is put into even sharper focus: Werner’s symphonies and instrumental concertos composed for the princely table have been lost, but the composer comes to the fore as a grand master of Latin sacred music. With his strength of character and contrapuntal perfection, he proves to be not only a prerequisite and teacher for Joseph Haydn, th efather of Viennese classicism, but himself a gateway to this stylistic epoch. Werner appears to us today as the spiritual support of the rather mundane Viennese classicism.
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La Serenissima, Adrian Chandler – Unlocked, Brescianello Vol. 2 (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:12:13 minutes | 1,42 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Signum Records
This album features the second half of Brescianello’s Opus 1; works 1 – 6 were released as ‘Behind Closed Doors’ in 2022. La Serenissima passionately believe that Brescianello is a composer who deserves greater recognition with the result that many of his works have been included in releases dating from 2019, our first release on Signum. Solo concertos for violin alternate with Sinphonias for strings and continuo; both forms illustrate Brescianello’s talent for fusing virtuosity with the sweetest of melodies. Also included on the album is an orchestral suite in A major that finishes with a rousing Giga.
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Kathleen Parlow – The Complete HMV & Colombia Recordings (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 02:38:53 minutes | 1,31 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Biddulph Recordings
The Canadian-born violinist Kathleen Parlow was one of the most exceptional violinists at the beginning of the 20th century. A brilliant child prodigy, who had performed before King Edward VII at Buckingham Palace at the age of 14, Parlow was a student of the legendary Leopold Auer, who was so enamored of her playing that he referred to her as ‘Mischa Elman in a skirt’. While a still a student, Glazunov, the director of the St Petersburg Conservatory, recommended that she give the Belgian premiere of his Violin Concerto. While still in her teens, Parlow’s performed with such legendary conductors as Thomas Beecham and Bruno Walter, and was the dedicatee of the Norwegian composer Johan Halvorsen’s Violin Concerto. Throughout the 1920s, Parlow gave several world tours, travelling as far afield as the Middle East, India, China, Korea and Japan. However, before she turned 30, she had had enough of life as a travelling virtuoso and decided to retire from giving concerts. She returned to Canada, and she made a career teaching until her death in 1963. This 2-CD release features all of the commercial recordings Parlow made for the HMV and American Columbia record labels. Her first records were made at the age of 19 for HMV in which she was guaranteed a special ‘artist royalty’ of 10%, a figure that matched what the company paid the famed coloratura soprano Luisa Tetrazzini. Parlow’s records for the Columbia Record Company in New York were made between 1912-16, and first brought out alongside those of none other than the legendary Eugene Ysaÿe.
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Jonas Sjøvaag – A Sense of Place (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 59:32 minutes | 652 MB | Genre: Vocal Jazz, Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Shipwreckords
– The lyrics are based on the premise that an experience, or an emotional event and connection, helps define place as much as the physical boundaries we relate to, explains Sjovaag:
– It could be a celebration of 50 years in an Irish pub in Oslo, which was written in Scotsman on Karl Johan, a fable about distance and closeness on the way home in rush hour traffic, and other small snippets of life. I want the stories to feel relevant, even to listeners from the outside.
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