Hi-Res Downloads

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Hi-Res Downloads
Tingvall Trio : Beat
J. Bamford (Music); P. Miller (Lab)  |  Feb 25, 2015
Based in Hamburg, the award-winning Tingvall Trio is a cosmopolitan combo led by Swedish composer/pianist Martin Tingvall, alongside Cuban bass player Omar Rodriguez Calvo and multi-disciplined drummer Jürgen Spiegel, from Bremen. This is the band’s sixth album in eight years, its eclectic jazz style highlighting the trio’s crossover appeal due to an amalgamation of rock, pop and classical influences. Tingvall’s compositions are infectiously melodic, sometimes a little pompous, formulaic even – but regularly downright fun. The trio sounds like it’s enjoying itself and the sound quality is excellent, the drum kit and piano particularly dynamic and vivid.
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Hi-Res Downloads
Neil Cowley Trio : Touch And Flee
J. Bamford (Music); P. Miller (Lab)  |  Feb 01, 2015
96kHz/24-bit WAV, ALAC, FLAC, Naim Jazz Records Naim CD206 (supplied by www. naimlabel. com) Former Brand New Heavies keyboardist Neil Cowley – a child prodigy playing Shostakovich piano concertos at the age of ten – can arguably lay claim to being one of the world’s most heard pianists in current times, having accompanied Adele on both her 19 and 21 albums. This fifth release from the trio with drummer Evan Jenkins and bassist Rex Horan (who replaced Richard Sadler after 2010’s Naim album Radio Silence) sees Cowley once again crossing myriad musical boundaries.
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Hi-Res Downloads
Tony Bennett & Lady Gaga : Cheek To Cheek
J. Bamford (Music); P. Miller (Lab)  |  Feb 01, 2015
When Tony Bennett – famously reinvented since becoming managed by one of his sons in the 1980s – released Duets II in 2011 it became his first ever album to debut at No1 on America’s Billboard charts. With Cheek To Cheek the octogenarian crooner has scored another No1. And make that strike three for Lady Gaga. This might appear an incongruous pairing.
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Hi-Res Downloads
Paul Lewis : Schubert: The Late Piano Sonatas (d784, D958, D959, D960)
C. Breunig (Music); P. Miller (Lab)  |  Feb 01, 2015
Although the last two Schubert sonatas are reissues from 2002, Paul Lewis has re-recorded the A-minor and C-minor (D784/958), again at the Teldex Studios Berlin, last spring. And in any case we haven’t had the higher resolution until now. There’s very little difference in sound: perhaps the new recordings are in tighter focus with less ambient sound, but it’s marginal. No-one I have heard makes more sense of the central outburst in the Andantino of the Sonata in A (D959); and Lewis’s Schubert suggests more affinity with Beethoven in its overtness – it’s a very different approach from that of the ‘reverent’ Mitsuko Uchida or even Paul Lewis’s mentor Alfred Brendel (whose example he followed in 2002 by omitting the exposition repeat in D960(i) – perhaps one day he’ll be persuaded otherwise).
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Hi-Res Downloads
Max Raptor : Mother's Ruin
J. Bamford (Music); P. Miller (Lab)  |  Feb 01, 2015
96kHz/24-bit WAV, ALAC, FLAC*, Naim CD188 (supplied by www. naimlabel. com) Max Raptor – a four piece punk rock band formed in 2006 in Burton upon Trent – has released a clutch of singles and an eight-track mini-album Portraits [Naim label] since touring with The Stranglers in 2010. Mother’s Ruin is the band’s first proper album, released Sept ’13.
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Hi-Res Downloads
Daniel Hope : Escape To Paradise The Hollywood Album
C. Breunig (Music); P. Miller (Lab)  |  Feb 01, 2015
The theme of this album is composers who found new lives in Hollywood, some but not all escaping from Germany in the 1930s. Korngold’s Violin Concerto is the longest work in selections, not exclusively for films, spanning from 1908 up to Schindler’s List and American Beauty. We hear themes from Casablanca, Ben Hur, El Cíd, et al, ‘Tränen in der Geige’ bringing relief from the general romantic wash. Max Raabe is good in ‘Speak Low’ and Daniel Hope’s friend Sting appears to swallow his mic in one arrangement.
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Hi-Res Downloads
Toronto Symphony Orchestra/peter Oundjian : Rimsky Korsakov: Sheherazade
C. Breunig (Music); P. Miller (Lab)  |  Jan 01, 2015
192kHz/24-bit FLAC, Chandos CHSA5145 (supplied by www. theclassicalshop. net) This appears to be the first Chandos orchestral recording from The Classical Shop at 192kHz/24-bit resolution – like the SACD, it has no extra work so is low-priced. It was produced live in mid-2013 by Soundmirror Inc at Toronto’s Roy Thomson Hall: the first of three Chandos projects with the orchestra.
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Hi-Res Downloads
Stefano Bollani : Joy In Spite Of Everything
J. Bamford (Music); P. Miller (Lab)  |  Jan 01, 2015
Italian pianist Stefano Bollani has covered many musical styles since becoming a professional player at the tender age of 15, his jazz collaborations with trumpeter Enrico Rava gaining him international recognition. Recorded in NY’s Avatar Studios last year, but only recently released, Joy In Spite Of Everything sees Bollani alongside drummer Morten Lund and bass player Jesper Bodilsen (both from Bollani’s working trio) joined by Mark Turner and jazz guitar maestro Bill Frisell. From the laid-back calypso style of the opener ‘Easy Healing’, with a tremendous contribution from Turner’s tenor sax, this modern jazz quintet sparkles with musical inventiveness and tremendous playing throughout the album. A bit more ‘air’ to the sound would have been welcome, nevertheless the tonality and textures of the band’s instruments are colourfully depicted.
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Hi-Res Downloads
Ingrid Fliter : Frederic Chopin: Preludes
C. Breunig (Music); P. Miller (Lab)  |  Jan 01, 2015
192kHz/24-bit ALAC/FLAC, Linn Records CKD475 (supplied by www. linnrecords. com) Chopin collectors will (should) have the Preludes with Friedrich Gulda [Audite/DG, 1950s] or his one-time pupil Martha Argerich [DG, 1975]. Add fellow-Argentinian Ingrid Fliter to the list! Unsurprisingly, her Chopin readings have become more interesting since her 2008/09 EMI debut CDs with the Waltzes, etc.
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Hi-Res Downloads
Jan Lundgren Trio : Flowers Of Sendai
J. Bamford (Music); P. Miller (Lab)  |  Jan 01, 2015
Classically trained Swedish pianist Jan Lundgren has made some 40 albums under his own name since graduating from Malmö’s Academy of Music in 1991. Flowers Of Sendai was recorded late last year in Italy, for the French BeeJazz label, since when Lundgren has further released a collection of standards from the great American songbook entitled All By Myself for Barcelona-based Fresh Sound Records. Here Lundgren is accompanied once again by bassist Mattias Svensson and highly accomplished Hungarian drummer Zoltán Csörsz Jr (who famously filled the seat of Jaime Salazar in Swedish prog-rock outfit The Flower Kings and has taken over from drummer Morten Lund in Lundgren’s Trio). Audiophiles will be impressed by the recording quality that puts the trio in a natural acoustic with the instruments clearly delineated in ‘open’ space.
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Hi-Res Downloads
Eric Clapton & Friends : The Breeze
J. Bamford (Music); P. Miller (Lab)  |  Jan 01, 2015
Eric Clapton is joined by an all-star cast – including Tom Petty, Mark Knopfler, bass supremo Nathan East and many others – in this tribute album honouring singer-songwriter JJ Cale. It was Cale, of course, who penned two of EC’s greatest solo hits: ‘After Midnight’ and ‘Cocaine’; and this collection of songs is named after ‘Call Me The Breeze’ which was the opening track on Cale’s 1972 debut album Naturally – it opens this set too. Sound quality varies from uninspiring (‘Rock And Roll Records’ and ‘Train To Nowhere’) to slightly better than average (‘Someday’ and ‘Songbird’). Highlights are John Mayer’s vocal performance in ‘Magnolia’ and Don White’s charming rendition of ‘Sensitive Kind’.
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Hi-Res Downloads
Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra, Sakari Oramo : Elgar Symphony No. 1 Cockaigne (in London Town)
C. Breunig (Music); P. Miller (Lab)  |  Dec 01, 2014
96kHz/24-bit FLAC, BIS-1939 (supplied by www. eclassical. com) Oramo’s Swedish orchestra plays Elgar with real warmth and commitment, especially the brass – glorious in the finale and at the end of the overture Cockaigne (where accurately dry bass-drum sounds are underpinned by organ – an option not always heard in recordings). There’s some characterful phrasing here by the principal clarinettist, presumably Hermann Stefánsson [see Hi-Res DownloadsHFN Aug ’14].
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Hi-Res Downloads
Jack Johnson : On And On
J. Bamford (Music); P. Miller (Lab)  |  Dec 01, 2014
On And On (2013) was the second album from Hawaiian-born surfer Jack Johnson recorded in his own Mango Tree studios, since when he has released four further studio albums and three live recordings, as well as writing the songs for the 2006 animated movie Curious George, in between his extensive charitable activities which include education in schools about nature conservation, etc. It features his song ‘Gone’ which was covered by Black Eyed Peas (as ‘Gone Going’) on the band’s album Monkey Business where Johnson sang the chorus. The recording is up-front and intimate, Johnson’s voice and intricate acoustic guitar closely mic’d, while fellow players Merlo Podlewski (bass) and Adam Topol (drums) appear well balanced throughout these soulful and often spirit-lifting ballads. But is it worth having in a 96kHz/24-bit container? Probably not.
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Hi-Res Downloads
Manfred Honeck/wiener Symphoniker : Johann Strauss
C. Breunig (Music); P. Miller (Lab)  |  Dec 01, 2014
It would be hard not to succumb to the very real charms of this programme of polkas, waltzes, etc, by the three sons of Johann Strauss – replete with effects like insects’ wings buzzing (string tremolandos in ‘The Bee’), cuckoo and other birds (‘Im Krapfenwaldl’), or the comic anvil blows of ‘Feuerfest’. Currently with an extended contract with the Pittsburgh Orchestra, the Austrian conductor Manfred Honeck – he first graduated from playing zither to viola – has made a special study of the genre. The playing is carefully balanced, the VSO set well back in the lively acoustic of the Salzburg Grosses Festspielhaus. But there’s a certain ‘flatness’ when you compare the champagne sparkle and variety to be found with Boskovsky’s mid-’60s Decca versions with the city’s premiere league Strauss orchestra, the Vienna Philharmonic, still sounding amazingly vivid as CDs.
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Hi-Res Downloads
Larry Goldings, Peter Bernstein & Bill Stewart : Ramshackle Serenade
J. Bamford (Music); P. Miller (Lab)  |  Dec 01, 2014
Often recording as ‘The Larry Goldings Trio’ this longstanding collective of American jazz virtuosi Larry Goldings (keyboards), Peter Bernstein (guitar) and Bill Stewart (drums) cover all manner of musical moods in their latest collaboration Ramshackle Serenade, from the rubato rumination of the album’s title track to the Brazilian-flavoured ‘Luiza’, interspersed with a smattering of blues, swing and soulful grooving to keep listeners enthralled throughout. The seductively rich textures and colourful tones of Goldings’ Hammond B3 organ (so reminiscent of the sounds favoured by Focus’s frontman Thijs Van Leer) have been captured exquisitely by this impressively dynamic recording released on the German label. The musicians really do sound like they’re playing together in a believable space, spread across a wide soundstage. Great stuff! JB Sound Quality: 85% Hi-Fi News Lab Report Much of the ultrasonic energy arising from this digital recording is associated with the gentle percussion [as in track 8,above] but could also be a product of distortion from downstream limiters.
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