Hi-Res Downloads

Born in Paris in 1656, Marin Marais studied the viol under Sainte Colombe and worked under Lully in the court orchestra. He wrote over 800 pieces for viol, many in suite form and the Canadian oboist has transcribed six of those here. (The baroque oboe was first heard in a work by Lully a year after Marais was born and it quickly became very much in demand in France. ) The suites are typically in seven-movement form – Prélude, Courante, Sarabande, Menuet, etc – with a few concluding Gigues having descriptive titles: ‘La Chicane’, ‘La Badine’, ‘La Petite’.

Coming to this one hot on the heels of the Craig Armstrong's It's Nearly Tomorrow, it might be tempting to think ‘Not another album of film music’, but though German-born saxophonist Jason Seizer has created an album drawing on music from some celebrated movies, he combines with his band – Pablo Held on piano, Matthias Pichler on bass and drummer Fabian Arends – to come up with a set that’s both smooth of sound and perfect for a little late-night listening. Not surprisingly Seizer’s breathy sax is to the fore, underpinned by delicate playing from his fellow musicians, with plenty of brushwork and cymbals in the percussion department, a rich, warm bass and every touch of the piano crystal-clear. It’s not the most challenging jazz album you’ve ever heard, but the musicianship is beyond question, and the recorded sound serves the performers well. AE Sound Quality: 85% Hi-Fi News Lab Report Digitally recorded and mastered, this 96kHz rendering offers very low levels of white noise (hiss).

96kHz/24-bit WAV/FLAC/ALAC*, BMG/Chrysalis 538013154 (supplied by www. naimlabel. com) This solo outing from award-winning composer Craig Armstrong was started when he was in Australia working on the music for the recent Baz Luhrmann remake of The Great Gatsby. Take all that on board, and you’ll probably have an inkling of what to expect from the generous 17 tracks that are on offer here,11 of which are instrumental – it sounds pretty much like film music, the songs having a distinct air of being rolled out to underpin the end titles of a movie.

96kHz/24-bit FLAC, Bee Jazz BEE 064 (www. supplied by www. hdtracks. co.

Political ill-will meant that the planned Vienna Philharmonic premiere of the Brahms-influenced Dvo?ák Sixth was deferred for three years and it was first played by a Prague orchestra in 1881. The VPO’s only recording came in 2000 under Myung-Whun Chung – superb, like the BPO/Kubelík (both DG), and I don’t think this Lucerne Orchestra version offers any real challenge. In seeking out every tiny detail, their young American chief conductor, I think, loses a forward momentum – even in the furiant scherzo. Only in the finale does everything come together splendidly.

96kHz/24-bit WAV, ALAC, FLAC*, Absolute/Megaphonic megad007 (supplied by www. naimlabel. com) As our Lab Report warns, there’s nothing ‘hi-res’ about the sound of Imogen Heap’s latest assemblage of sonic sculptures. Nevertheless she’s as inventive and eclectic as ever in her musical explorations in which she has cut ’n’ pasted a patchwork of myriad samples and ‘sound seeds’ (field recordings of mundane sounds sent in by her fans).

The Moscow composer-pianist Alexander Scriabin wrote his first five piano sonatas between 1893 and 1907; the other five date from 1911-13 (Nos 5-10 are in single-movt form). They show a development from a Chopin-influenced style – eg, ‘Funèbre’ in Sonata 1 – to one where ‘the tonic became distantly perspectived… existing only in the imagination’. Some have associated texts or sub-texts. Also Moscow trained, Anna Malikova made her recordings in a German studio in Feb/March of 2012, ’13 and ’14, playing a Shigeru Kawai pianoforte – then a newly launched model.