Hi-Res Downloads

Steve Earle’s 15th release, featuring his cracking road band The Dukes (& Duchesses), was produced in collaboration with his ‘Twang Trust’ production partner Ray Kennedy. His fans couldn’t possibly be disappointed by the outcome, as the vitality and virtuosity of the band is abundant throughout the album’s 12 songs. Earle does what he always does best: tells world-weary stories that amuse, frustrate and infuriate in equal measure. It was recorded in one of the largest and most revered studio spaces in Nashville, the historic RCA Victor Nashville Sound Studios built in 1964 by Chet Atkins and acquired by Ben Folds (of Ben Folds Five fame) in 2003.

He’s done the lutes, he’s done the concept album, and now Mr Sumner delivers perhaps the most down-the-line rock album of his solo career. It’s not quite as rootsy as one might expect, despite the road-trippy ‘Heading South On The Great North Road’: the album takes its title from the New York studio where it was recorded, after all. Yes, this outing by the Englishman in New York is occasionally overblown and stodgy, though that kind of goes with the ‘rediscovering one’s inner rocker’ genre, but when it’s good it harks back to the glory days of early Police tracks, which is no bad thing. The sound, while dense in places, has decent clarity, with of course the voice front and centre, but there’s nothing much here to challenge a high-res audio system, and frankly the ‘issues’ tackled here seem somewhat predictable, from refugees to the plight of the ageing rocker.

Trumpeter and composer Blanchard joins forces with his regular quintet to deliver an album of covers and originals combining plenty of funk and groove, along with lush, deep washes of sound and moments of sparkling musical genius. Executive producer here is Blue Note president Don Was, and the material ranges from a soulful version of Hank Williams’s ‘I Ain’t Got Nothing But Time’ to the take on Coldplay’s ‘Midnight’ used to close the set. The sound ranges from the stripped down to the near-orchestral, with Blanchard’s instrument always sounding glorious, and the band – Donald Ramsey on bass, Oscar Seaton on drums, guitarist Charles Altura and Fabian Almazan – has that intuitive ability to break free and bounce the tunes around when required. Mixed sample rates notwithstanding [see Lab Report, below], this is one superb-sounding album.

These four young Spanish musicians decided they would like to undertake the three Brahms Piano Quartets – composed for piano, violin, viola and cello and first heard in 1861, ’62 and ’75. No 1 is by far the most popular, not least for its final ‘Rondo alla Zingarese’, and it was later orchestrated by Schoenberg (and twice recorded by Rattle). The 1949 set by Serkin and the Busch players is still current and these new recordings face huge competition. The stage width in this Zaragoza studio production is rather narrow and the 1862 Vuillaume violin sounds less generous in tone than I would have liked.

Thanks to preparation and de Waart’s keen ear for balance, every detail of Elgar’s orchestration of the A-flat Symphony is heard – possibly with greater definition than you’ll find elsewhere. But it’s all rather literal and comes at the cost of passion, heartache and a sense of momentum. Gerontius has been the almost exclusive recording preserve of English knights – Ashkenazy the exception. The attractions here are fine orchestral playing and choral sound (set back in a spacious Antwerp hall).

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.

Written for Joachim in 1853 (as was the more coherent Phantasy in C), Schumann’s Violin Concerto was suppressed until 1937 – with perhaps some justification. Zehetmair found many errors in the printed edition when preparing for his 1988 Teldec CD, and this is his second recording. Choosing a chamber orchestra for Schumann is now the norm but such is the reverberance of the venue, the Théâtre des Champs-Elyseés, it could be of any size. And I didn’t like effectively a separate acoustic for the solo violin.