Meredi – Stardust (Exit Earth) (2020)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 01:03:05 minutes | 517 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Modern Recordings
Berlin composer/producer Meredi releases her new album, Stardust (Exit Earth). The 27-year-old’s introduction to music didn’t come via the allure of glittery stages or the hedonistic lifestyle of rockstars, but rather out of pure need to express herself. Stardust isn’t Meredi’s debut album. It is all melody.
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Mercury X – Imprisoned (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 45:12 minutes | 543 MB | Genre: Metal
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Frontiers Records s.r.l.
Putting aside the age-old debate about the difference between ‘progressive’ and ‘prog’ for a moment, it’s always exciting to hear someone gleefully nailing a classic sound. Thunderously heavy but technically adept on a level that seems slightly unfair, MERCURY X are undoubtedly going to excite a huge number of DREAM THEATER and SYMPHONY X fans with their new album. “Imprisoned” is a rampaging and exuberant piece of work, and one that serves up every desirable aspect of those aforementioned bands’ trademark sounds. Frontman and guitarist Martin Björklund has a powerful voice, full of Russell Allen-like grit but able to switch seamlessly to misty-eyed pathos, and, as you might expect, his colleagues are all absurdly gifted technicians. From the opening seconds of “Until The Break Of Day” onwards, the band’s third album is impossible to fault on a technical level, nor in terms of its production, which is as beefy and precise as it deserves to be. For all of the above alone, MERCURY X are worthy of your attention. “Imprisoned” sounds massive and ruthlessly contemporary. Meanwhile, these guys can really fucking play.
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Merchandise – A Corpse Wired For Sound (2016)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 43:08 minutes | 907 MB | Genre: Alternative Rock
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © 4AD
Formed nearly a decade ago, galvanized by Tampa hardcore and inspired by its miscreant noise, “A Corpse Wired For Sound signals” a new chapter for Merchandise. Following 2014’s “After The End” — a full-band effort recorded in a closet — the band stripped back to its core of Carson Cox (vocals, electronics), Dave Vassalotti (guitar, electronics) and Pat Brady (bass). The trio travelled to Rosà, Italy for their first ever sessions in a recording studio, with a local, ICIO. The nine-song, nocturnal A Corpse Wired For Sound was recorded half in the studio and half at home, in Tampa as well as Cox’s newly adopted bases of New York and Berlin – the culmination of a long-distance collaboration between Cox and Vassalotti.
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Kevin Short – Mephistopheles & Other Bad Guys (2018)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 57:11 minutes | 1,03 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © PentaTone
Yes, at the opera, when the tenor and the soprano stubbornly want to make eyes at each other, there is always a baritone or a bass to sow some discord, sometimes in vain—Osmin, Pizzarro, Caspar—, sometimes successfully—the various Mephisto, Nick Shadow Lindorf-Dapertutto-Miracle. The American bass-baritone Kevin Short offers here, accompanied by an Orchestre Philharmonique de Marseille in great shape, a compendium of very, very bad characters, roles he has already sung more or less on the whole lyrical scene. Reckon that he has already performed at the MET in New York, at the operas in Chicago, Houston Los Angeles and Washington, at the Opéra Comique in Paris, in Cologne, Stuttgart, Bologna; in the festivals in Santa Fe, Bregenz, Baden-Baden, Aix-en-Provence. Not forgetting, obviously, his intense participation in the concertante field with the orchestras of Boston, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Cleveland, the one from the RAI, from Radio France and so many others of that kind. Purists (who are absolutely right), fear not: Kevin Short perfectly masters the French pronunciation, as well as the German one and the Italian one. As a “bonus”, he offers a tune from his compatriot Gordon Getty, Mephistopheles to Faust. For your information, Getty indeed bears the name of the famous petroleum dynasty, but Gordon much prefers to compose music—some excellent pieces, incidentally.
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Menzel Mutzke – Spring (2020)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 47:33 minutes | 535 MB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Mutterkomplex
Der Trompeter von Moop Mama zeigt sich auf seinem ersten Soloalbum als Interpret eines ernsthaften und dennoch zugänglichen Jazz. „Spring“ ist Musik für die Nacht, eingespielt von einem virtuosen Quartett, u.a. mit dem international gefeierten Pianisten Pablo Held. Special Guest ist Menzels Bruder, der Pop-Sänger Max Mutzke.
Menzel Mutzkes „Spring“ ist elegant, zärtlich und wärmend. Ein Jazz-Album für spätere Stunden. Musik, mit der sich durch nächtliche Großstädte cruisen lässt. Lee Morgan kann warten.
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Menuhin Duo – The Voice of Rebellion (2018)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 01:04:20 minutes | 521 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Genuin
Mookie Lee-Menuhin and Jeremy Menuhin already proved on their debut GENUIN CD that they are a great piano duo. And now the composer Jeremy Menuhin presents himself for the first time on CD as well: The duo’s new GENUIN CD exclusively features world premiere recordings. There is a baroque suite, but it plays elaborately with our expectations and listening habits, and there are “transformations” of individual movements of the two string sextets by Johannes Brahms: real ear-openers! Also, there are colorful variations on a theme and a virtuoso fantasy that unites the styles: brilliantly played, true expansions of the repertoire!
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Arabella Steinbacher, Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, Charles Dutoit – Mendelssohn Violin Concerto, Op. 64 – Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto, Op. 35 (2015)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:08:14 minutes | 1,14 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © PentaTone
This release arguably features the two greatest concertos ever written for the violin: performed by one of the most brilliant violinists of her generation, together with one of the finest orchestras, and under the baton of one of the world’s foremost conductors. This recording of Tchaikovsky/Mendelssohn violin concertos bears witness to the eminence of the collaboration between violinist Arabella Steinbacher, conductor Charles Dutoit and PENTATONE’s Orchestra of the Season January June 2015, Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, and the result thereof.
After waiting for a long time to record these concertos with the perfect collaboration, Arabella Steinbacher didn’t waste any chance to shine with heart-felt enthusiasm and bravura in this recording.
Her performance produced such a pure, yet fierce sound that it allowed the music to speak in an immediate, translucent way. Recorded in September 2014 in the magnificent Victoria Hall, Geneva, the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande were totally at home with the repertoires and performed with great confidence; they were led by Dutoit, who was vivid, rhythmic and clear in his direction. The vigorous playing results in a vibrant sound that is captured perfectly in this multi channel SACD recording.
Soloists of the Spannungen Festival 2016 – Mendelssohn, Penderecki: Sextets (2017)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 58:57 minutes | 581 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Avi Music
A unique meeting of musical and architectural history, the Spannungen Festival is an annual chamber music festival held at the Heimbach hydroelectric power station. This release features two sextets performed among the turbines, brass instruments and Art Deco lamps of Heimbach in 2016: Mendelssohn’s Sextet in D Major, with its piano-dominated score, contrasted with Penderecki’s colossal Sextet for Clarinet, Horn, String Trio and Piano, considered by some to be the first masterpiece of the 21st century.
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Sir John Eliot Gardiner, London Symphony Orchestra – Mendelssohn: Symphony No. 3 “Scottish”, The Hebrides Overture – Schumann: Piano Concerto (2014)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:19:17 minutes | 1,63 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © LSO Live
Inspired by his travels to the British Isles and full of the influence of the rolling Scottish landscape, both Mendelssohn’s Symphony No 3 ‘Scottish’ and his overture The Hebrides (‘Fingal’s Cave’) are amongst the composer’s most popular and admired works. The London Symphony Orchestra present us with inspiring performances of these works, as well as a performance of Schumann’s Piano Concerto, featuring the celebrated pianist, Maria João Pires.
Sir John Eliot Gardiner writes of this coupling; ‘Even if they spoke with different accents these genial Romantics were united in their ambitious fervour for ‘abstract’ music to be acknowledged as having the same expressive force as poetry, drama or the literary novel. The three works on this album exemplify the endeavour and range of invention of two of them, friends and colleagues in Leipzig’.
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Anima Eterna Brugge, Jakob Lehmann & Chouchane Siranossian – Mendelssohn: In Time (Violin Concerto & Octet) (2018)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/88,2 kHz | Time – 59:46 minutes | 1,01 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Alpha Classics
Chouchane Siranossian is a rising star of the baroque and classical violin, Jakob Lehmann a virtuoso violinist and orchestral director who frequently conducts Anima Eterna. Together, they embody what the Bruges orchestra and its founder, Jos van Immerseel, have decided to call the ‘Next Generation Anima Eterna’… Today they are presenting Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto in its original version.
“We wanted to take a look into Mendelssohn’s workshop. He struggled with his self-diagnosed ‘revision disease’ and always strove to work hard on himself and his creations” says Jakob Lehmann. Chouchane Siranossian keeps on “It was a fascinating experience for me to discover historical research and its implementation on period instruments in collaboration with Anima Eterna Brugge. In my interpretation, I used exclusively the fingerings, bowings and other performance markings of Ferdinand David and Joseph Joachim, both of whom rehearsed the work with the composer.”
This recording is rounded off with the Octet, also in its original version, which is longer and has many alterations in instrumentation, harmony and articulation…
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Swiss Piano Trio – Mendelssohn: Piano Trios (2011)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 57:07 minutes | 536 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Audite Musikproduktion
This recording of the Mendelssohn Trios marks the beginning of the cooperation between audite and the Swiss Piano Trio whose recordings are issued on audite from 2011. A recording of the complete Schumann Piano Trios is planned next, with the first volume scheduled for release in June 2011.
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Yehudi Menuhin, Wilhelm Furtwangler, Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra – Beethoven & Mendelssohn: Violin Concertos (Remastered) (1966/2012)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:04:57 minutes | 639 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Warner Classics
Acclaimed violinist Yehudi Menuhin delivers first-rate performances of Felix Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto in E Minor and Béla Bartók’s Violin Concerto No.2. His stunning tone, intensity and overall virtuosity are engaging and warm. Menuhin is joined by noted conductor Wilhelm Furtwangler, the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra and the Philharmonia Orchestra. The set will go down as one of the finest violin performances of all time and Menuhin remains one of the most accomplished violinists of the century.
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Liza Ferschtman, Het Gelders Orkest, Kees Bakels – Mendelssohn: Violin Concerto, Op. 64 / String Octet, Op. 20 (2017)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/352,8 kHz | Time – 58:17 minutes | 2,98 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Challenge Records
Liza Ferschtman:….slowly, as my musical path kept unfolding, I got to the point where more and more I was able to let go of my preconceived notions about the Violin Concerto and more clearly start to see and hear my own voice in it. Over the years I got to know so much more music by Mendelssohn, from the inside out, and I felt the language become more fully my own. When working with Kees Bakels on it a couple of years ago things started to really fall into place, and last May when performing it with the Arnhem Philharmonic I really was all of a sudden struck by a distinct feeling that I can only describe as falling in love all over again with this magical piece. Certain details in the score seemed to appear completely new to me and the idea of approaching the work with the same collaborative energy as in chamber music made me experience it completely afresh. The combination of passion, grand emotions and at the same time lightness and elegance, such characteristic traits for Mendelssohn, fell completely into place. To feel this way about such a familiar piece was revelatory and I knew I wanted to share these discoveries, if you like, with many more people.
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Howard Shelley – Mendelssohn: The Complete Solo Piano Music, Vol. 4 (2016)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:07:11 minutes | 1,04 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Hyperion Records
The Op 35 set of Preludes and Fugues is the most substantial single opus Mendelssohn wrote for solo piano, a mark of his reverence for the mighty Bach. Coupled with the popular fifth book of Songs without Words, we have here a heavyweight fourth volume in Howard Shelley’s compendium.
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