Hi-Res Downloads

Those of the view that audiophiles only like obscure and ‘plinky-plonky’ music, of the kind no-one would actually sit down to listen to for pleasure, are going to have a field day with the title of this one, but behind the ‘lost in translation’ is a truly lovely album. In contrast to our other squeezebox offering this month on p95 (and there’s a phrase I never thought I’d find myself writing!), this album is of tango pieces associated with guitarist Roberto Grela, and beautifully played by Louise Jallu on bandoneon together with acclaimed Japanese guitarist Hiroki Fukui. It’s a delightfully simple set, treated to a wonderfully intimate recording, combining crispness and warmth to winning effect. And boy, can these two play, with an easy rapport and that sense of firing off each other that’s the sign of true musicianship.

The young Paris Conservatoire trained cellist’s 2014 debut CD Play was of salon pieces. A year on – Moreau almost 21 – he tackles 18th-century concertos with a period orchestra [see also HFN Album Choice Mar ’15]. The punning title means ‘young lad’. With the finale taken at a real lick, the Haydn C major is the one well-known work here.

96kHz/24-bit ALAC/FLAC/WAV, moscd4010 (supplied by www. naimlabel. com) It’s not uncommon that a recording identified as compromised in the Lab Report might still sound quite marvellous to these ears. Here, however, something was clearly wrong, with distortion hovering at the edge of audibility, pressuring the peaks and affecting image clarity on busier tracks like ‘Listen To Me’ and the surprising bottle-neck blues of ‘Dust My Broom’.

Elizabeth Roe is a young Chicago pianist with already an impressive CV. Well worth hearing, she’s also half of a piano duet (see here). Here, she rounds out her programme with two solo ‘night pieces’ – Barber’s Nocturne ‘Homage To John Field’ and Britten’s Notturno written (1963) as a test piece for the very first Leeds Pianoforte Competition. Both main works exist in definitive recordings: John Browning’s (for whom the Barber was written) with Szell/Cleveland on Sony; and Richter’s with Britten/ECO on Decca.

96kHz/24-bit ‘Studio Master’ FLAC, Linn Records AKD 405 (supplied by www. linnrecords. com) A natural for high-res downloads, Barker and band’s fourth album is the first issued on a label they don’t own. The one that they found to be simpatico is Linn, which paradoxically has embraced digital with similar force to its analogue worship (minus the politics).

Eithne Ní Bhraonáin is back with her eighth set, apparently five years in the making, inspired by the night sky over the small Channel Island of Sark, and nearly 30 years on from her 1988 album Watermark. The good news – for her legions of fans, at least – is that Dark Sky Island sounds every bit an Enya album. The potentially bad news is that it sounds exactly like an Enya album. .

96KHZ/24-BIT ALAC/FLAC/WAV, Polydor Records 531 825-2 (supplied by www. hdtracks. com) Slowhand needs no introduction to rockers above a certain age, since it contains three of Clapton’s best-known signature songs: ‘Lay Down Sally’, ‘Wonderful Tonight’ and his perennial cover of JJ Cale’s ‘Cocaine’. Moreover the album’s other songs are far from just fillers.