Frost – Day And Age (Deluxe Edition) (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 01:51:05 minutes | 1,37 GB | Genre: Rock
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © InsideOutMusic
Frost* are back in action once more, with their fourth studio album ‘Day And Age’. Formed in 2004 by keyboard player Jem Godfrey, the band have so far released 3 studio albums, and most recently the career-spanning ’13 Winters’ collection. Now the band have returned as the 3-piece of Godfrey alongside longtime collaborators John Mitchell & Nathan King. “We were quite energised by the change to be honest”, says Godfrey, “it gave us a much broader palette of options in compositional terms, we would write a song and say, “Let’s imagine drummer x has joined the band, what would he do here? It led us off in some interesting new directions”. In the end, three drummers became part of the recording project : Kaz Rodriguez (Chaka Khan, Josh Groban), Darby Todd (The Darkness, Martin Barre) and Pat Mastelotto (Mister Mister, King Crimson). “Each musician brought a very different style of playing to the music,” says John Mitchell, “and we tailored the songs to suit them.” In January 2020, the band setup a new temporary studio for a week in a converted coastguard tower at Dungeness in East Sussex, UK. “We were 30 feet by the sea, next to a nuclear power station and a lighthouse, in midwinter! So there was hardly any daylight and the weather was dreadful”, laughs bassist Nathan King, “We wrote “Terrestrial” and “Repeat To Fade” there and in my head you can absolutely hear the bleak isolated oppression having an effect on us. The songs we wrote were far darker – the wind howling round the building at night, the power station generating crackles on the audio, a huge lighthouse next door sweeping a vast light into the fog every 30 seconds and John screaming “ENJOY YOURSELVES YOU SCUM” into a microphone. It was absolutely brilliant!”.’Day And Age’ will be released as a Limited 2CD (including the album as instrumentals), Gatefold 2LP + CD (incl. etching on Side D), and as Deluxe Digital Album.
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Ensemble Plus Ultra – From Spain to Eternity – The Sacred Polyphony of El Greco’s Toledo (2014)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:10:37 minutes | 1,19 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Archiv Produktion
In 2011 DG released a spectacular 10-CD anthology on Archiv Produktion with Ensemble Plus Ultra (EPU), “the finest British early music singers” (Early Music Today), commemorating the 400th anniversary of Tomas de Victoria’s death. This box sold about 6.100 units worldwide and won a Gramophone award.
Now the award winning ensemble is back with a major recording project to mark the 400th anniversary of the death of El Greco in 2014 – composers including Cristobal de Morales, Alonso Lobo and Alonso de Tejeda were prolific in Toledo during the 37 years El Greco lived and worked there, and much of this music certainly inspired his painting.
Morales is THE Spanish composer of the Renaissance. Morales – Kapellmeister at the cathedral in Toledo, but also in Italian cities – is generally considered to be the most influential Spanish composer before Victoria. Almost all of his music is sacred, and all of it is vocal.
Pieces by Lobo and Tejeda make a wonderful conclusion to the disc – all in all a varied program, and encompassing three composers from Toledo during the time of El Greco.
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Frode Kjekstad – In Essence (2019)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 40:57 minutes | 546 MB | Genre: Contemporary Jazz, Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Losen Records
The internationally recognized and critically acclaimed jazz guitarist Frode Kjekstad from Norway is out with a new CD! This time in the legendary trio format. This time only with original material. And: this time with Norwegian musicians! After previously having recorded with living jazz legends as Dr. Lonnie Smith, Eric Alexander and Byron Landham in his recordings done in New York, he now has brought his childhood friend and superb bass player Frode Berg, and the amazing drummer Magnus Sefaniassen Eide to a studio in Sandvika, Norway.
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Frode Haltli, Arditti Quartet & Trondheim Soloists – Air (2016)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 44:51 minutes | 744 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © ECM New Series
Frode Haltli, the uniquely expressive Norwegian accordionist, is heard here with chamber orchestra, with string quartet and solo, performing music by Danish composers Bent Sørensen (b. 1958) and Hans Abrahamsen (b. 1952). Haltli plays Sørensen’s It is Pain Flowing Down Softly on a White Wall with the Trondheim Soloists, as well as the solo piece Sigrid’s Lullaby. Hans Abrahamsen’s Three Little Nocturnes find the accordionist in the company of the redoubtable Arditti Quartet, “a vital institution in contemporary music” as Haltli says. For the title composition Air, Hans Abrahamsen returned, at Frode Haltli’s suggestion, to the early solo work Canzona, revising it until it became a new piece. Of Abrahamsen’s music, Frode Haltli writes that “not one note is accidental, nor are any of the other specifications. Sometimes, this results in very complex music, while a moment later it is so simple that it seems a child could perform it. He writes music that can be on the verge of being discomforting, while at the same time it is indescribably lovely.”
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Fritz Kreisler – Kreisler: The Complete Recordings, Vol. 10 (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:26:08 minutes | 849 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Naxos
Fritz Kreisler was in his early 50s during the two years covered by these recordings – consolidating his status as the world’s most beloved violinist, touring Italy and elsewhere in Europe, as well as giving notable concerts in Carnegie Hall and throughout the US. The Great Depression and the premature death of his brother Hugo added to personal stresses in 1929, but these recordings, many of which are unpublished tests, reveal Kreisler at his best.
In the Sonatina mouvement written in New York by Dvořák and renamed Indian Lament by Kreisler, we hear the composer’s yearning for his homeland, enhanced by beautiful double-stops. In Ravel’s Habanera, Kreisler’s seductive rhythm is to the fore, while Godowsky’s Nocturnal Tangier is full of North African promise.
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Friend ‘N Fellow – Characters (2019)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 46:50 minutes | 1,04 GB | Genre: Pop, Singer-songwriter
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Doctor Heart Music HD
Friend ´n Fellow are phenomenal: For almost 30 years, they have been successfully underway beyond the mainstream, but also beyond all other musical pigeon-holes. Distinctive and unique, but yet changeable and always good for a surprise. One voice, one guitar the rest is amazement, the press commented a few years ago. With their intensive and genuine interactions, the musicians expose even the finest nuances which seem to have become forgotten in todays radio pop music world. The music of Friend ´n Fellow breathes the intensity of blues, enjoys the freedom of jazz and touches the sound of soul. CHARACTERS is the duos twelfth album. 12 songs about 12 different characters who encounter each other in the songs and reach out to each other. This is the way to delve into 48 minutes of deep, clear music.
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Frielinghaus Ensemble – Mendelssohn & Bruckner: String Quintets (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 01:11:12 minutes | 643 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © KKE Records
Anton Bruckner wrote music history with his symphonies. Little is known that he also created a chamber music work. The quintet in F major for two violins, two violas and cello, on the one hand, ties in with Bruckner’s symphonic gesture, but on the other hand brings the orchestral dimensions to a charming small format.
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Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin – Friedrich der Grosse (Frédéric le Grand): Music for the Berlin Court (Musique pour la cour de Berlin) (2012)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:12:58 minutes | 1,32 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © harmonia mundi
The year 2012 marks the tercentenary of the birth of Frederick the Great, whose political and military glory has often relegated his musical talent to the status of a mere hobby. But Frederick II was not only the key personality of Berlin musical life for the whole of the 18th century – as is shown by the works of the composers presented on this CD, all of whom worked at his court at some point in their careers – but also an excellent flautist who left posterity a number of fine flute sonatas from his own pen.
The Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin celebrates its 30th anniversary in 2012. Formed in East Berlin in 1982, Akamus can pride itself on an outstanding reputation and an exceptional career: it has been a welcome guest in all thegreat musical institutions of Europe, Asia and North and South America. In 2011, the ensemble took in its stride operatic productions in nine European countries, an extended tour of the USA and its first tour to China.
The group gives around one hundred concerts a year, with varied forces, under the direction of its different Konzertmeisters: Midori Seiler, Stephan Mai, Bernhard Forck, Georg Kallweit; or guest conductors such as Marcus Creed, Daniel Reuss and Hans-Christoph Rademann. The Akademie’s collaboration with René Jacobs, which started almost 25 years ago, has turned into a genuine artistic partnership. The productions resulting from their work together have been enthusiastically acclaimed both on stage and on record: their recording of ‘Die Zauberflöte’ was distinguished with an Editor’s Choice in Gramophone and BBC Music Choice. More recently ‘Agrippina’ has been shortlisted for a BBC Music Award in April 2012.
Since 1994, the Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin has recorded exclusively for harmonia mundi.
Composer: Johann Gottlieb Graun, Christoph Nichelmann, Frederick the Great, Carl Philipp Emmanuel Bach
Orchestra/Ensemble: Academy for Ancient Music Berlin
Friedrich Gulda, Wiener Philharmoniker & Claudio Abbado – Mozart: Piano Concertos No. 25 & 27 (1974/2018)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:07:10 minutes | 1,15 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Deutsche Grammophon (DG)
The year 1786 was one of Mozart’s most fruitful, full of diverse works in his most mature vein. It was crowned with the production of the C major Concerto, K. 503, and the “Prague” Symphony. This concerto is the last of the series in C major, and combines with its companion K. 491 in C minor, which in turn succeeded the A major K. 488, to make a trilogy that has been likened to the three great symphonies of two years later. Whatever the family similarities between the other pieces may be, there is no doubt that the C major Concerto, like the C major Symphony, show Mozart glorying in the complete mastery of means and offering a certain Olympian grandeur that at the same time does not exclude his more tender, eloquent vein.
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Friedrich Gulda & Albert Golowin – Donau so Blue (1970/2014)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/88,2 kHz | Time – 39:07 minutes | 700 MB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © MPS Classical
The title piece, „Donau So Blue“, is a blues on which Austrian pianist-composer Friedrich Gulda (1930-2000) is accompanied by two seasoned jazz musicians: Hans Rettenbacher on bass and Manfred Josel on drums. Gulda felt himself to be an outsider in the jazz world. He was a renowned Mozart and Beethoven interpreter, but did not want to be tied down to the world of classical music. And who was the singer Albert Golowin? Gulda describes him as “a dropout, a certain type of Viennese, a highly talented dilettante, a bungled baritone with an aversion to the concert hall.” Actually, Golowin was a pseudonym that Gulda used for singing performances. The pianist was celebrated as brilliant and criticized as infant terrible. Often, Gulda would not stick to the announced program; once he performed playing the recorder naked.
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Friedrich Gulda feat. Klaus Weiss – It’s All One (1970/2015)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/88,2 kHz | Time – 39:16 minutes | 718 MB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © MPS
Amazing stuff – and one of the hippest records ever cut by pianist Friedrich Gulda! Unlike some of his other more modernist efforts, this one’s got a really free swing to it – and it features a spare stripped-down approach that has Gulda’s work on piano and ‘electra piano’ backed only by the drums of Klaus Weiss. If you know Weiss’ playing, you’ll know that he’s a heck of a player – one of the hardest swinging players in Germany during the 70s, with a rich range of styles that included funk, soul jazz, and hard bop playing. The best numbers on the album feature Gulda playing these amazing lines on ‘electra piano’, with Weiss grooving underneath – either hitting a modal groove, a bossa one, or in some cases a freer beat to match Gulda’s solos. The record kicks off with the four-part ‘Suite For Piano, Electra Piano, & Drums’ – which has two great groovers, the ‘bossa nova’ and ‘finale’ section’. Side two features the more avant ‘Meditation III’, plus the excellent ‘Blues Fantasy’, which starts out free, then rolls into a great modal funky part with great electric keyboard lines!
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Friedrich Gulda – Mozart: Piano Concertos Nos. 20 & 21 (2020)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/192 kHz | Time – 01:02:26 minutes | 2,27 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Deutsche Grammophon (DG)
Friedrich Gulda is known to all. He is the musical wizard with the embroidered cap, an artist who is equally at home in jazz, the Viennese lied, or the works of the Viennese Classic. Gulda might have only performed a small number of his Austrian compatriot’s 27 piano concerto ? but with these few he certainly created a sensation. That the present recording of the Concertos Nos. 20 and 21, even after 25 years, is still regarded as ranking among the very best performances is something that can be heard after just a few bars. The minor-key first movement of No. 20 begins with a measured tempo and precise articulation, then the piano joins in with almost sober clarity and proceeds to lead a concentrated, tightly enmeshed conversation with the orchestra.
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Friedrich Gulda – Ineffable: The Unique Jazz Piano Of Friedrich Gulda (1965/2015)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 38:38 minutes | 789 MB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Columbia – Legacy
Friedrich Gulda, who first attempted to play in a jazz setting in the mid-’50s after firmly establishing his classical career, is on far stronger ground on this Columbia LP recorded in early 1965. Gulda’s chops are very much in evidence throughout the sessions. In spite of the fact that he had not previously worked with bassist Bob Cranshaw, the two hit it off immediately, while drummer Albert ‘Tootie’ Heath had recently completed a tour with the pianist. His very deliberate approach to a standard like ‘I’ll Remember April’ is rather refreshing, while he’s also up to the challenge of jazz works such as J.J. Johnson’s ‘Lament’ (played as a solo) and Jimmy Heath’s waltz-time ‘Ineffable.’ Gulda’s jaunty hard bop vehicle ‘The Horn and I’ and his Art Tatum-like ‘Quartet’ are among his more memorable compositions. Briefly available in the mid-’60s, this excellent album will not be easy to locate.
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Friedrich Gulda – Bach – Gulda – Clavichord (The Mono Tapes) (2018)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:00:15 minutes | 1,10 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Berlin Classics
Once you open this album on Qobuz, you are in danger of being thrown into an abyss of perplexity. But once you get over the initial surprise, you may find yourself asking if you’ve been had: if you’re the butt of a joke by Friedrich Gulda, who has pawned his concert Steinway for a badly-tuned Japanese koto. But it’s “just” Gulda playing Bach on a clavichord that seems to be buckling under pressure or thanks to funny sound engineering. And then, slowly, it works its charms on us, and we are willing participants in a sound-test by Friedrich Gulda on a mean instrument that he seems to be really beating up on, distorting the strings, trying to get at sounds that the humble clavichord really isn’t made for. It’s as if we’ve snuck in to grin at the sight of this musician playing extracts from the Well-Tempered Clavier on an instrument which is anything but. Recorded at home, or at a concert at the end of the 1970s, these records, now out in the light of day, bear witness to the pure-musical research of an artist who has never stopped questioning and pushing at the boundaries of musical convention. – François Hudry
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Friederike Chylek – From Byrd to Byrd (2019)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 01:07:22 minutes | 778 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Oehms Classics
From Byrd to Byrd is the funny legend that perches on the cover of this album from German harpsichord player Friederike Chylek, who studied under Jesper Christensen at the Schola Cantorum in Basel, where she currently lives. As well as being a recitalist she works with various baroque ensembles and forms a duet with violinist Simon Standage with whom she records for Chandos.
William Byrd’s range and formidable musical inventiveness has influenced many English harpsichordists down the years. Often thought of as “the father of English music”, he was one of the most important composers in the era of Shakespeare, protected by Queen Elizabeth I who granted him the rare monopoly of musical printing in England for more than twenty years.
This privilege allowed his music to spread and influence a whole generation of musicians, in particular his students John Bull, Thomas Morley and Peter Philips. Recorded in 2017 and based on a Matthias Griewisch copy of a Ruckers harpsichord from 1624, this anthology by Friederike Chylek paints a very rich panorama of a profusion of English music, savouring the works of Dowland, Locke, Lawes, Purcell, Gibbons and Morley, bookended by that of William Byrd of whom everything is an echo, and two whom everything returns in the end. – François Hudry
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