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Maria Callas – Puccini: Manon Lescaut (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 02:00:44 minutes | 1,32 GB | Genre: Classical, Opera
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Warner Classics
Manon Lescaut, from the eponymous Puccini opera, is a difficult character to grasp, evolving from a naïve young girl to a venal and manipulative femme fatale, and finally a despaired woman weeping over her miserable end. Maria Callas never performed the role on stage but left this milestone recorded version in 1957, forming with Giuseppe Di Stefano (as Des Grieux) one of the most iconic couples of the whole Puccini discography.
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Maria Callas, Tullio Serafin, Orchestra del Teatro della Scala di Milano – Maria Callas: 90 Opera Arias (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 07:36:15 minutes | 7,92 GB | Genre: Classical, Opera
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Alexandre Bak – Classical Music Reference Recording
Maria Callas (born Maria Anna Cecilia Sophie Kalogeropoulou), was an American-born Greek soprano who was one of the most renowned and influential opera singers of the 20th century. Many critics praised her bel canto technique, wide-ranging voice and dramatic interpretations. Her repertoire ranged from classical opera seria to the bel canto operas of Donizetti, Bellini and Rossini and, further, to the works of Verdi and Puccini; and, in her early career, to the music dramas of Wagner. Her musical and dramatic talents led to her being hailed as La Divina (“the Divine one”).
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Marcus Moraes – Carrer (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 53:26 minutes | 623 MB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Marcus Moraes [dist. Tratore]
In his new album, Marcus Moraes, a seasoned guitarist with a career spanning a little over two decades, finds creative possibilities and presents one of his main characteristics: putting beautiful melodies before his ability to play his instrument. His new album Carrer brings all the lyricism the composer places in his sound, complimented by the work of featured artists Marcos Santos, Pedro Almeida, and Rafael de Sousa.
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Marcos Valle – Vivo Sonhando! (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 36:49 minutes | 748 MB | Genre: Bossa Nova, Latin Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © RevOla
Valle begann im Alter von sechs Jahren, Klavier zu lernen. Die erste erfolgreiche Aufnahme von ihm und seinem Bruder Paulo Sergio, der für ihn die Texte schrieb, war Sonho de Maria, aufgenommen vom Tamba Trio im Jahr 1963.
Mit den später gleichfalls berühmten Edu Lobo und Dori Caymmi gründete er ein Trio. Im Jahr 1963 nahm Valle seine erste LP Samba demais auf mit den Eigenkompositionen Amor de nada, Razão do amor, Tudo de você, Sonho de Maria, E vem o sol und Ainda mais lindo, alle mit Texten von Paulo Sérgio Valle. Außerdem enthielt das Album die Songs Vivo sonhando (Tom Jobim), Moça flor (Durval Ferreira / Lula Freire), Canção pequenina (Pingarilho), Ela é carioca (Tom Jobim / Vinícius de Moraes), Ilusão à toa (Johnny Alf) und A morte de um Deus de sal (Roberto Menescal / Ronaldo Bôscoli). Das Album wurde mit mehreren Preisen ausgezeichnet. Zu dieser Zeit begann Valle Konzerte zu geben. Somit gab er sein Studium der Rechtswissenschaft an der Universität von Rio de Janeiro im zweiten Jahr auf.
1965 erschien sein zweites Album O compositor e o cantor Marcos Valle („Der Komponist und Sänger Marcos Valle“) mit den Songs Gente, Preciso aprender a ser só, Samba de verão, A resposta und Deus brasileiro, alle wieder in
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Marco Fumo – Timeless (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 33:14 minutes | 574 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Odradek Records
Following the success of his genre-defying album Reflections, Italian pianist Marco Fumo presents a similarly fascinating and thought-provoking programme that places keyboard sonatas by Domenico Scarlatti alongside pieces by William Grant Still, Duke Ellington, Chick Corea, Manuel Saumell and Ignacio Cervantes. These works have been carefully ordered to be heard in pairs or small groups, creating a sense of timelessness so that we hear repertoire not usually brought together: the innovations of Scarlatti heard in a fresh new context alongside 20th-century jazz and Cuban dance. Marco Fumo specialises in what he calls this ‘global outlook’, embracing music as far as is possible without classifications, genres and temporal and stylistic distinctions, thus creating the possibility of listening to composers who are distant in time and in their way of expressing themselves as if they were contemporaries, and of bringing them closer, comparing them and listening to them together. Marco Fumo has always aimed to embrace good music of any genre without distinction, interested more in its innate qualities than in categorisation. Fumo is considered to be one of the best interpreters of Afro-American piano repertoire; after an early career in classical music, he studied early ragtime, analysing the origins of and influences on early ragtime piano. For over a decade he collaborated professionally with Nino Rota and Ennio Morricone.
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Manon Galy & Jorge González Buajasán – Nuits parisiennes (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:19:30 minutes | 1,27 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Aparté
Manon Galy and Jorge González Buajasán – residents of the Singer-Polignac Foundation as part of the Zeliha Trio – have released their first duet record, after their victory at the Lyon International Chamber Music Competition in 2021. On the program of these Parisian Nights: Debussy, Ravel, Poulenc and Milhaud.
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Manchester Orchestra – The Valley Of Vision (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 25:52 minutes | 297 MB | Genre: Indie Rock
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Loma Vista Recordings
The Valley Of Vision is the follow up project to Manchester Orchestra’s masterpiece, A Black Mile To The Surface. These songs stemmed from Black Mile but the band switched things up creatively and holed themselves up in a home studio in Muscle Shoals. This is another excellent piece of work from the band which really showcases how they are becoming important record makers both through Andy Hull’s song writing and their innovation of sound in the studio. Manchester Orchestra are the best Rock Band in America and The Valley Of Vision continues to prove that to us.
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Magic Dirt – Young And Full Of The Devil (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 01:00:17 minutes | 665 MB | Genre: Rock
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Emergency Music
The album was recorded in 12 days in 1997 at Birdland Studios. It was the first album to feature lead guitarist Raul Sanchez as Dave Thomas departed due to creative differences in mid-1997.
According to bass player Dean Turner the band smoked hash and took some acid during the recording process, saying “We went in there and just had a good time you know. Just worked like 15, 17 hours a day.”
Producer Lindsay Gravina said, “This record stands apart because in the purest sense, it’s essentially an art record. This album captured the whole zeitgeist of those times, a fucking apocalyptic catharsis, for us personally, but also for the times in general – a last hurrah for a scene that had signalled its peak, and who better to call it?”
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Maggini String Quartet, Nicholas Daniel, Michal Kaznowski, Jonathan Rutherford – Lazy Afternoon (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/192 kHz | Time – 01:11:09 minutes | 2,57 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Meridian Records
Lazy Afternoon, retrospectively, expresses the joy of being young, on a hot day in early summer, in the beautiful school grounds near a large tree, which was surrounded by beautiful flowers.
I wrote this arrangement of Lazy Afternoon, for cello solo with string trio and piano, especially for this recording with the Maggini String Quartet. The piano maintains its original accompaniment.
One Sunday evening in late Spring, 2015, Graeme and Penny Kay invited me to their house to talk about a commission. They asked me to write a string quartet lasting seven or eight minutes to be played at the opening of a private concert which was to be given by the Tippett String Quartet at Orford Church on November 28th 2015 in celebration of their joint 60th birthdays, the programme continuing with Janacek’s Intimate Letters, and finishing with Schubert’s Death and the Maiden.
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Maat Saxophone Quartet, António Carlos Costa – Renascer (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/192 kHz | Time – 59:52 minutes | 1,89 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © 7 Mountain Records
A unique combination of saxophone quartet and guitar consisting exclusively of Portuguese musicians. Of course the Fado, a Portuguese music genre, should not be missing!
“Renascer” is a new collaboration project of Maat Saxophone Quartet and the guitarist António Carlos Costa, where the Portuguese musical genre Fado is explored on an unusual instrumentation: saxophone quartet and Portuguese guitar.
Being Fado one of the biggest cultural representations of this country, the idea of putting together the already usual Portuguese guitar with the saxophone quartet came across quite natural and spontaneously. From there surges the invitation to António Carlos Costa, with whom Maat coincided in the city of Amsterdam.
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Maat Saxophone Quartet – Ciudades (2020)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:04:36 minutes | 1,05 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © 7 Mountain Records
If high musical energy gets your interest, Maat Saxophone Quartet could be quite the perfect listening experience. They’re a young and upcoming Dutch-based group, all Portuguese, releasing their debut Ciudades at 7MNTN! New ensembles can bring something sparkling and eager, and Maat is no exception on this. No shyness for rough edges and enthusiasm, but also flavoured by a corresponding native language.
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M83 – Fantasy (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 01:06:21 minutes | 732 MB | Genre: Electronic, Synth-pop, Dream Pop
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Virgin Records
M83 announces the details of his new forthcoming full-length album, FANTASY, that will see release on March 17th. In addition to this news, M83 has shared the sweeping, transformative first cut “Oceans Niagara”. Accompanying the track is a video directed by his long-time creative collaborator, filmmaker (Knife + Heart, You And The Night) and brother Yann Gonzalez.
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James Ehnes, Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra, Edward Gardner – Janacek: Orchestral Works, Volume 2 (2015)
SACD Rip | SACD ISO | DSD64 2.0 & 5.1 > 1-bit/2.8224 MHz | 01:16:52 minutes | Front/Rear Covers | 3,81 GB
or FLAC(converted with foobar2000 to tracks) 24bit/88,2 kHz | Front/Rear Covers | 1,32 GB
This is the second volume in our series devoted to the orchestral works of Janáček, with the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra and Edward Gardner.
The repertoire on this disc includes some of the greatest programmatic pieces by the composer. Unsurprisingly, the first piece featured here is Jealousy – his first declared piece of programme music, originally written to preface the opera Jenůfa but never included in any production of it during his lifetime. Both The Ballad of Blaník and The Fiddler’s Child (also known as a ‘ballad for orchestra’) are characterised by the use of musicals symbols, reflecting the Czech poems on which the pieces are based and also some of the composer’s personal reflections and responses.
The one-movement Violin Concerto The Wandering of a Little Soul is a more mysterious piece, with uncertainties surrounding the title, the date of creation, and the goals of its composition. Like the unfinished Danube symphony, the version recorded here has been reconstructed by Miloš Štědroň and Leoš Faltus from Janáček’s sketches.
An interpretation of the famous tale by Gogol, Taras Bulba was completed in 1915 and was Janáček’s most substantial orchestral work to date. It is inflected with folk dances, battle and horse-riding music, suffering and love, and brought to a grandiloquent apotheosis, in orchestration of almost cinematic vividness.
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Jean-Efflam Bavouzet, Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra, Edward Gardner – Janacek: Orchestral Works, Volume 1 (2014)
SACD Rip | SACD ISO | DSD64 2.0 & 5.1 > 1-bit/2.8224 MHz | 01:03:23 minutes | Front/Rear Covers | 3,12 GB
or FLAC(converted with foobar2000 to tracks) 24bit/88,2 kHz | Front/Rear Covers | 1,06 GB
Edward Gardner conducts the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra in the opening volume in their series devoted to orchestral works by Leoš Janáček. It features three pieces that originate in Janáček’s late period, when his passionate feelings for Kamila Stösslová, thirty-seven years his junior, inspired an extraordinary flowering of his creative genius.
The Sinfonietta is one of Janáček’s most successful and popular works, famed for its opening movement, a brazen fanfare scored for a phalanx of brass with timpani. The remaining four movements, full of character, celebrate Janáček’s adopted town of Brno, blending occasional reflection with high-voltage exuberance.
Scored unusually for left-hand piano and an ensemble of brass and flute, the Capriccio is remarkable even among Janáček’s distinctive late works. Its overall effect is mercurial and capricious, in the composer’s words: ‘whimsical, all wilfulness and witticisms’. Jean-Efflam Bavouzet employs his formidable technique and interpretative flair in the solo part.
The Cunning Little Vixen, Janáček’s opera from 1923, was not universally well received at first. A number of its orchestral interludes, however, were immediately popular and after Janáček’s death in 1928 Václav Talich, a leading Czech conductor, extracted an orchestral suite, re-orchestrated by two young colleagues. Recently Sir Charles Mackerras restored Janáček’s striking original orchestration, the version recorded here.
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Jamie Cullum – Twentysomething (2004)
PS3 Rip | ISO | SACD DST64 2.0 & 5.1 > 1-bit/2.8224 MHz | 57:15 mins | Scans included | 3,88 GB
or DSD64 Stereo (from SACD-ISO to Tracks.dsf) > 1-bit/2.8224 MHz | 62:47 min | Scans included | 2,52 GB
or FLAC 2.0 (converted with foobar2000 to tracks) 24bit/88,2 kHz | 62:47 mins | Scans included | 1,41 GB
Already a sensation in his native England, 22-year-old piano man Jamie Cullum comes off like a hip amalgamation of Harry Connick, Jr. and Randy Newman on his sophomore effort, Twentysomething.
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