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I guess when you get to your 12th studio album you might be forgiven for running out of steam a bit, but this latest package from jazz diva Diana Krall has been received with somewhat mixed reviews, since its belated release due to the singer/pianist’s illness. It’s a bit of an oddity, comprising mainly of ’70s ballads by the likes of Randy Newman, The Carpenters and Elton John, and with not much sign of the piano fireworks Krall has brought to bear on some of her previous outings. It may be the familiarity of so much of the material, or that these new recordings don’t bring too much we didn’t already know, but this does seem something of an exercise in treading water. Even a new song by Paul McCartney doesn’t help much, a duet on Georgie Fame’s ‘Yeah Yeah’ is only 50% successful(!) and, while the sound is workmanlike, even that doesn’t really stand out.

192kHz/24-bit ALAC/FLAC, CKD 462 (supplied by www. linnrecords. com) This first instalment in a new Sibelius cycle with the BBC’s Welsh Orchestra has prompted a mixed response. Criticism of the sound from Cardiff’s Hoddinott hall strikes me as spectacularly wrong (Gramophone) as – at 192kHz/24-bit at least – this is an extremely fine, natural orchestral presentation.

We’ve only just been introduced, and already 32-year-old Cuban-born Ms Pacheco is sitting at her piano in just her drawers – what is one to think? Actually, Marialy Pacheco already has six previous releases under her belt (not that she’s wearing one), and is an acclaimed classical and jazz pianist. This is simply her first album for the Neuklang label, and finds Pacheco going back to her Havana roots, accompanied by Colombian bassist and drummer Juan Camillo Villa and Miguel Altamar. It’s a tight little trio, able to kick back on tracks such as ‘Cambodian Smiles’ or motor through ‘En El Camino’, while the album centres around the pianist’s three-part ‘Cuban Suite’, exploring the country’s dance styles. And the ‘klang’ here is certainly impressive: yes, the piano is rather spotlit, but the bass and drums are resolved well, and this is a very attractive-sounding set.

44. 1kHz/24-bit WAV/FLAC/ALAC, Naim CD210 (supplied bywww. naimlabel. com) So what’s with the Hitchcockian title? Well, London-based trio Troyka tells us the title of its new album comes from guitarist Chris Montague’s fear of birds – this ‘escalated into an album set in a fictionalised London: a post-apocalyptic dystopian nightmare in which people have contracted a form of avian flu that is slowly turning them into human-size birds’.

96kHz/24-bit FLAC, BIS BIS-2091 (supplied by www. eclassical. com) Masaaki Suzuki turns to Mozart and the unfinished Requiem. The principal question here is whose edition do you perform, and in this recording Süssmayr’s completion is used together with additions by Joseph Eybler with an added ‘Amen’ fugue (discovered in 1960) after the Lacrimosa.

Blank & Jones is not so much a band as a brand: a duo of producers specialising in trance, techno and electronica, based in Köln, Germany and with a dozen or so albums and even more singles to their name since they got together to create Sunrise back in 1997. All of which might suggest what to expect here: banging choons, and a bit of ambient trippiness, right? Erm, no: here the duo teams up with German pianist and composer Marcus Loeber to create an album all about intimately recorded solo piano, playing gentle, melodic pieces. And that’s about it: this is, as the title suggests, a relaxed, slow-paced set of tracks, none of them especially memorable but all suitably chilled out. The piano sounds nicely weighted and detailed, and the whole thing might be just the thing to play at a dinner party (or a laid-back hi-fi show demonstration).

The veteran vibes player Bobby Hutcherson marks his return to the venerable Blue Note label with this all-star set, produced by label president Don Was and with an all-star line-up including saxophonist David Sanborn, organist Joey DeFrancesco, and drummer Billy Hart. None of these stalwart performers are exactly strangers to the recording studio thanks to extensive careers. As you might expect, this is a joyful set, with DeFrancesco’s Hammond bouncing off Hutcherson’s understated vibes, and assured rhythm-keeping by Hart. It’s a relaxed, good-time set of tunes, played by a bunch of old masters completely at ease with themselves and what the others are doing.