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Monty Alexander – Cobilimbo (1978/2014)
FLAC (tracks) 24-bit/88,2 kHz | Time – 45:28 minutes | 852 MB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Master, Official Digital Download – Source: highresaudio.com | Front Cover | © MPS
Monty Alexander long ago combined together the influence of Oscar Peterson with the soul of Gene Harris and Nat “King” Cole to form his own appealing and personable style. Long a bit underrated (due to the shadow of Peterson), Alexander has recorded more than a score of excellent albums. Monty Alexander began piano lessons when he was six and he played professionally in Jamaican clubs while still a teenager; his band, Monty and the Cyclones, was quite popular locally during 1958-1960. He first played in the U.S. when he appeared in Las Vegas with Art Mooney’s Orchestra. Soon he was accompanying a variety of top singers, formed a friendship with vibraphonist Milt Jackson, and began gigging with bassist Ray Brown. With the recording of a pair of Pacific Jazz albums in 1965, an RCA date in 1967, and a Verve session in 1969, Alexander began to gain a strong reputation. His series of exciting albums for MPS during 1971-1977 found him in prime form, and his recordings in the ’80s, ’90s, and 2000s found him building on his original style. Alexander, who often pays tribute to his Jamaican heritage, performs regularly with his own trio and swings hard in his own voice. ~~Artist Biography by Scott Yanow
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JD Allen – Americana: Musings on Jazz and Blues (2016)
FLAC (tracks) 24-bit/88,2 kHz | Time – 45:00 minutes | 894 MB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Master, Official Digital Download – Source: HDTracks | Front Cover | © Savant Records
This is tenor saxman and composer JD Allen’s tenth album as a leader and his fifth consecutive project for Savant. Once again, his regular sidemen for the past eight years, bassist Gregg August and drummer Rudy Royston, are back on board. Eight years is a pretty impressive stint for any band to put in together, especially in the jazz world and the ensemble work reflects the familiarity of the players, presenting a series of friendly obstacle courses hinged on spontaneous and collective choice-making.
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Townes Van Zandt – The Late Great Townes Van Zandt (1972/2015)
FLAC (tracks) 24-bit/48 kHz | Time – 51:52 minutes | 552 MB | Genre: Country
Studio Master, Official Digital Download – Source: Q0buz | Digital Booklet | © Charly
This is the second perfect album Van Zandt cut in 1972, a complement to High, Low and in Between. Together they contain the highest points of his brilliant but erratic career. The Late Great may be a bit stronger, with classics like “Pancho & Lefty,” “No Lonesome Tune,” and “If I Needed You,” but there’s not a weak track here. Van Zandt’s voice is in top shape, the song selection is superb, and Jack Clement’s understated production gives the tunes a timeless quality. He eschews the hokey touches that make parts of Our Mother the Mountain sound corny, opting for a subdued sound that uses light touches of folk, pop, and country music in their arrangements. The set opens with “No Lonesome Tune,” one of Van Zandt’s more hopeful songs, delivered with mandolin, quiet pedal steel, and piano complementing Van Zandt’s poignant vocal. “Sad Cinderella” and the epic “Silver Ships of Andilar” are mysterious ballads with oblique lyrics, open to many interpretations. In the Van Zandt documentary Be Here to Love Me the singer says that his goal is to write songs so peculiar that “nobody knows what they mean, not even me.” He succeeds with these two numbers. “Sad Cinderella” could be a song of recrimination to a woman at the end of an affair, or a disillusioned letter to an America caught in the contradictions of the Vietnam War, or perhaps just an exercise in poetic language. Whatever its meaning, Van Zandt’s pained vocal and sparse piano fill it with longing and tenderness. “Andilar” is one of the most atypical tunes in Van Zandt’s catalog, a five-minute epic of war and betrayal filled with images of sinking ships, icebergs, battle, and death. Acoustic guitar, a wailing female background chorus, and a sweeping orchestral arrangement give it a cinematic feel, and again it could be about Vietnam, some long forgotten European war, or his own inner turmoil. Whatever the meaning, its scope is cinematic and full of Van Zandt’s singular poetry. “Pancho & Lefty,” Van Zandt’s greatest commercial success, has a folk/pop arrangement with mariachi horns coming in on the coda to give it a Mexican flavor. It’s the best rendition of the tune Van Zandt ever cut. “If I Needed You” is purely romantic, one of Van Zandt’s most understated love songs, simply sung over a bouncy country rhythm. The album’s three covers get made over into Van Zandt’s own image. Guy Clarke’s “Don’t Let the Sunshine Fool Ya” uses pedal steel, female backing vocals, and bluesy guitar to deliver a message that’s full of ironic humor. Hank Williams’ “Honky Tonkin'” is pure country, with Van Zandt’s vocals siding up the scale to crack on the high notes just like Hank Sr used to do. “Fraulein” uses a fiddle to add poignancy to Van Zandt’s vocals on this post-WWII tune about a GI’s impossible love for a German girl. The album closes with the goofy spiritual “Heavenly Houseboat Blues,” that sees Van Zandt sailing down the river Jordan in a slowly sinking silver houseboat. He gargles the last verse with a mouth full of water, ending the set on an odd, giddy note. ~ j. poet
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Sommernachtskonzert 2016 / Summer Night Concert 2016 – Katia & Marielle Labeque, Wiener Philharmoniker, Semyon Bychkov (2016)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 01:16:15 minutes | 758 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download – Source: Qobuz | Digital Booklet | © Sony Classical
The Vienna Philharmonic performs its annual Summer Night Concert at Schönbrunn, an open air event with free admission, in the unique ambience of the gardens of Schönbrunn Palace on Thursday 26 May, 2016. The Summer Night Concert will be conducted by Seymon Bychkov. The soloists will be Katia and Marielle Labèque.
With this open air concert in Schönbrunn, the Vienna Philharmonic wishes to provide all Viennese, as well as visitors to the city, with a special musical experience in the impressive setting of Schönbrunn Palace and its beautiful baroque gardens, a UNESCO World Cultural Heritage Site.
Since 2008 the Vienna Philharmonic have provided an outstanding experience for all visitors. In the recent years the orchestra has been conducted by Gustavo Dudamel, Valery Gergiev, Franz Welser-Möst, Daniel Barenboim, Georges Prêtre and Zubin Mehta Among the previous guest solists: Yefim Bronfman, Benjamin Schmid, Lang Lang and Rudolph Buchbinder.
In 2016 Semyon Bychkov is conducting his first Summer Night Concert with the Vienna Philharmonic in a programme that focuses entirely on French composers and covers the period between Romanticism and Neoclassicism, providing an overview of the vast stylistic range of French music during the 19th and early 20th centuries. The soloists in Poulenc’s Double Concerto in D minor FP 61 will be Katia and Marielle Labèque. This is the first time that this particular work has been played at a Philharmonic concert.
The tradition of the Vienna Philharmonic goes back to 1842, when Otto Nicolai conducted a Grand Concert with all members of the imperial ‘Hof-Operntheater’. This event was originally called ‘Philharmonic Academy’ and is regarded as the origin of the orchestra. Since its founding the orchestra is managed by the administrative committee – a democratically elected body – and works artistically, organizationally and financially autonomous. All decisions are reached on a democratic basis during the general meeting of all members.
Bychov’s approach to music making combines innate musicality with the rigours of Russian pedagogy. With his time carefully balanced between the concert hall and the opera house, Bychkov conducts repertoire that spans four centuries. Bychkov currently holds the Klemperer Chair of Conducting at the Royal Academy of Music, and the Günter Wand Conducting Chair with the BBC Symphony Orchestra with whom he appears annually at the BBC Proms
Katia and Marielle Labèque are sibling pianists renowned for their ensemble of synchronicity and energy. Daughters of Ada Cecchi (who was, herself, a pupil of Marguerite Long), Katia and Marielle had a childhood filled with music. Their musical ambitions started at an early age and they rose to international fame with their contemporary rendition of Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue (one of the first gold records in classical music) and have since developed a stunning career with performances worldwide.
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Sommernachtskonzert 2014 / Summer Night Concert 2014 – Lang Lang, Wiener Philharmoniker, Christoph Eschenbach (2014)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 01:16:17 minutes | 763 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download – Source: Qobuz | Digital Booklet | © Sony Classical
The Vienna Philharmonic performed its annual Summer Night Concert Schönbrunn, an open air event with free admission, in the unique ambience of the gardens of Schönbrunn Palace on Thursday, May 29, 2014. The Summer Night Concert was conducted for the first time by Christoph Eschenbach. The soloist was Lang Lang.
Despite less than optimum weather conditions approximately 40,000 people came to the magnificent grounds of Schönbrunn Palace to hear compositions by Hector Berlioz, Franz Liszt and Richard Strauss. Lang Lang performed brilliantly as piano soloist in the Burlesque for Piano and Orchestra by Richard Strauss.
With this open air concert in Schönbrunn, the Philharmonic wishes to provide all Viennese, as well as visitors to the city, with a special musical experience in the impressive setting of Schönbrunn Palace and its beautiful baroque gardens, a UNESCO World Cultural Heritage Site.
New York Polyphony – Roma Aeterna: two Roman masses (2016)
FLAC (tracks) 24-bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 01:12:07 minutes | 1,32 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Master, Official Digital Download – Source: eClassical | Digital Booklet | © BIS Records
Recorded: August 2015 at St Cecilia Cathedral, Omaha, USA
The widely acclaimed vocal ensemble New York Polyphony has on its previous recordings for BIS focussed on Franco-Flemish polyphony (endBeginning, BIS-1949), the English Renaissance (Times go by Turns, BIS-2037) and Christmas (Sing thee Nowell, BIS-2099). Each of these discs – which have been highly praised by the critics, receiving no less than two Grammy Award nominations – has also included contemporary works, resulting in striking resonances between music from across more than half a millennium. With their new album, Roma aeterna, the ensemble follow the example of so many musicians before them and go on a pilgrimage to the Eternal City, but this time they remain in the 16th century throughout the disc, constructing a programme centred on two of the greatest composers of the era – Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina and Tomás Luis de Victoria. Palestrina’s polyphonic art has influenced composers throughout the ages and continues to do so today, and his Missa Papae Marcelli is often regarded as the crowning glory of vocal music from the era. His slightly younger colleague Tomás Luis de Victoria was born in Spain, but went to Rome to study in 1765 and remained there for two decades. During that time he published a number of works, including Missa O quam gloriosum and the motet Gaudent in cœlis. The programme includes works scored for four as well as for six voices, in which the four members of New York Polyphony are variously joined by Tim Keeler (countertenor), Andrew Fuchs (tenor) and Jonathan Woody (bass-baritone).
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Sebastiano Meloni – Moods and Sketches: 12 improvisations for piano (2016)
DSD64 (.dsf) 1 bit/2,82 MHz | Time – 01:05:40 minutes | 2,63 GB | Genre: Classical
Official Digital Download – Source: nativeDSDmusic | Digital Booklet | © OUR Recordings
Nothing in life falls precisely into neat boxes, despite our best efforts to make things “fit”. Consider the two featured instruments on this recording. First, the recorder, which despite its relatively simple design, enjoyed near-universal popularity from the Middle Ages to the Baroque, played by prince and pauper alike. Then, there is the harpsichord, a marvel of engineering for its time; an extraordinary canvas upon which generations of composers wrote tone poems and toccatas, crafting contrapuntal mazes and virtuoso displays that still challenge the most skillful interpreter. But times and tastes change, and eventually, these quintessential representatives of the musical arts (along with most of their repertoire) were packed away, together with the powdered wigs and knee breeches for a long slumber during the 19th century.
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Sonny Criss – This Is Criss! (Rudy Van Gelder Remaster) (1966/2014)
FLAC (tracks) 24-bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 40:14 minutes | 447 MB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Master, Official Digital Download – Source: HDTracks | Digital Booklet | © Prestige Records
Recorded: Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ; October 21, 1966
Remastered: 2008, Rudy Van Gelder at Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ
In 1966 producer Don Schlitten imported Sonny Criss to New York for a recording session with a rhythm section handpicked for their ability to swing and for their understanding of the bebop methods that drove Criss. Determined to enhance the career of an alto saxophonist he considered an overlooked genius of the modern era, Schlitten thus provided the circumstance for one of Criss’s great albums. To many listeners, This Is Criss! was a revelation; it presented a fully matured soloist who had overcome the uneven conception and time problems that many of them remembered from his brilliant but erratic earlier work. Highlights include the grit and emotional directness of his playing on the blues and his inventiveness on the beautiful and harmonically demanding “Skylark.”
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Yanni – The Dream Concert – Live from the Great Pyramids of Egypt (2016)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 57:52 minutes | 697 MB | Genre: New Age
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download – Source: Q0buz | Digital Booklet | © Portrait – Sony Masterworks
The Dream Concert: Live from the Great Pyramids of Egypt is the seventh live album and concert video by contemporary instrumentalist Yanni, officially released on June 3, 2016. The two concerts were performed outdoors on October 30 and 31, 2015, on the grounds of the Egyptian pyramids and Great Sphinx of Giza, Yanni’s first performance in Egypt.
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Steven Isserlis – reVisions (2010)
FLAC (tracks) 24-bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 58:10 minutes | 510 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Master, Official Digital Download – Source: eClassical | Digital Booklet | © BIS Records
Recorded: November 2009 at the Tapiola Concert Hall, Finland
Steven Isserlis has earned a reputation as one of the foremost cellists of our day. At the same time he has become known for his ingenuity and innovation in programming, something which this disc is the perfect example of. It combines four works for cello and orchestra that wouldn’t even exist without Isserlis – all arrangements made at his personal request, and each of them by the arranger of his personal choice. The most radical reworking is the opening piece, an arrangement based on the fact that Debussy at the age of 19 composed a Suite for cello and orchestra. All that is known for certain about this suite is that its fourth movement was called Intermezzo, and that this piece has survived in a version for cello and piano. In her imaginative reconstruction of – or rather replacement for – Debussy’s original composition, Sally Beamish has used this piece as the opening movement, going on to construct orchestral arrangements of four other Debussy works from the same period, including the piano pieces Rêverie and Danse bohémienne. The two Ravel songs which follow were arranged by Isserlis’ friend, the violinist Richard Tognetti in order to supplement the concert programme for a tour that the two were to make with Tognetti’s own Australian Chamber Orchestra. Vladimir Blok’s orchestration of Prokofiev’s Concertino, which had been left incomplete at the death of the composer, was made as Isserlis was unhappy with the existing arrangement of the work, made by Kabalevsky. The disc closes with the earliest of these four re-visions, film composer Christopher Palmer’s orchestration of Ernest Bloch’s From Jewish Life, allowing the disc to end with the movement entitled Prayer – ‘one of the most fervently beautiful pieces ever written for the cello’, according to Steven Isserlis himself. Throughout the programme Isserlis receives the expert support of Tapiola Sinfonietta conducted by Gábor Takács-Nagy. (more…)
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Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart – Piano Sonatas Nos. 1-6 – Roberto Prosseda (2016)
FLAC (tracks) 24-bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:56:32 minutes | 1,85 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Master, Official Digital Download – Source: Q0buz | Front Cover| © Decca
Roberto Prosseda is a highly gifted pianist most closely associated with the lesser known piano works of Felix Mendelssohn. Indeed, his Mendelssohn series of recordings for Decca carries the words “rarities” and “discoveries” on the covers, and the repertory — the recently unearthed Piano Concerto in E minor (the so-called No. 3, reconstructed by Marcello Bufalini) and various solo works previously unrecorded — fully lives up to the claims. Prosseda has also ventured onto other fairly uncharted turf, recording the complete piano outputs of Goffredo Petrassi and Luigi Dallapiccola, the latter series earning five Diapason awards from the influential French musical magazine Diapason. Prosseda has appeared at some of the most prestigious concert venues across Europe and the U.S., including Carnegie Hall, the Berlin Philharmonie, and Wigmore Hall in London, sites where he introduced the Mendelssohn E minor Piano Concerto. Despite his devotion to the little known, Prosseda’s repertory is hardly limited to it: he plays an array of works by J.S. Bach, Haydn, Mozart, Schubert, Chopin, Brahms, and many others. Prosseda is also a highly respected musicologist, a factor giving him an edge in excavating rarities by Mendelssohn and others, as well as editing problematic compositions. Prosseda’s recordings are available on the Decca and Naxos labels. Roberto Prosseda was born in Latina, Italy, in 1975. From 1994-1998 he studied at the Accademia Pianistica in Imola, where his most important teachers were Boris Petrushansky and Alexander Lonquich. He had subsequent training at the Cadenabbia, Italy-based International Piano Foundation under Leon Fleisher, Charles Rosen, Dmitri Bashkirov, and Karl Ulrich Schnabel. Prosseda won a string of piano competition prizes, including at the Franz Schubert Competition in Dortmund and the Salzburg-based W.A. Mozart Competition. In the early years of the new century, Prosseda began appearing regularly at major concert venues in Europe, Asia, and the Americas and was also active unveiling and championing many previously unknown piano works of Mendelssohn. In the 2007-2008 season Prosseda presented many of these discoveries and rarities on tour in Berlin, Leipzig, Milan, London, Toronto, the Kuhmo Chamber Music Festival (Finland), Ravenna Festival, Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, and other notable venues. Prosseda launched his acclaimed series of Mendelssohn piano works for Decca in 2006 with the album Mendelssohn Discoveries, which contained 13 previously unrecorded solo piano pieces. Among his later recordings is the 2009 Decca CD containing the Mendelssohn E minor Piano Concerto, with conductor Riccardo Chailly.
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The Saxon Alternative: Telemann – Music for Wind Band – Syrinx (2015)
FLAC (tracks) 24-bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:01:47 minutes | 1,04 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Master, Official Digital Download – Source: Q0buz | Digital Booklet | © Resonus Classics
Recorded: St Mary’s Church, Stoke by Nayland on 16-17 February & 28-29 April 2014
Making their Resonus Classics debut is period wind ensemble Syrinx with a programme of works by Georg Philipp Telemann.
Revealing a fascinating blend of styles, Telemann’s wind music is an eclectic mix of perfectly balanced Baroque dances, full-blown orchestral overtures and character pieces exemplified by the rustic miniature of Les Paysans and the gentle slumber of muted double-reeds in Le Someil.
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The Avison Ensemble – George Frideric Handel: 12 Concerti Grossi, Opus 6 (2010)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/88,2 kHz | Time – 160:28 minutes | 3,34 GB
Official Digital Download – Source: LinnRecords.com | Covers & Digital Booklet
The Avison Ensemble, directed by Pavlo Beznosiuk, present George Frideric Handel’s complete Opus 6 Concerti Grossi on a three disc set. This work is widely regarded as the composer’s greatest contribution to the Baroque period. (more…)
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The Avison Ensemble – Arcangelo Corelli: Opus 1 & 3 – Church Sonatas (2014)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 147:52 minutes | 3,07 GB
Official Digital Download – Source: LinnRecords.com | Covers & Digital Booklet
‘Opus 1 & 3: Church Sonatas’ is the final recording in The Avison Ensemble’s welcome undertaking to record Corelli’s complete chamber music in celebration of the 300th anniversary of the composer’s death. (more…)
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The Avison Ensemble – Arcangelo Corelli: Opus 6 – Concerti Grossi (2012)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/192 kHz | Time – 129:33 minutes | 4,8 GB
Official Digital Download – Source: LinnRecords.com | Covers & Digital Booklet
The UK’s leading period instrument ensemble, The Avison Ensemble, presents the first recording in their series celebrating the chamber music of Arcangelo Corelli. Directed by Pavlo Beznosiuk the ensemble explores the inspirational works of the Italian composer, including a captivating interpretation of the much-loved Christmas Concerto. (more…)
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