Hi-Res Downloads

In this mid-2012 Brahms recording from the reverberant Lukaskirche, Dresden, Batiashvili is playing the Stradivarius owned by Joachim. She doesn’t play his familiar first-movt cadenza, however, but – like Isabelle Faust on Harmonia Mundi last year – the one by Busoni which has timpanist and orchestral strings joining in. The three Romances Op. 22 are by Schumann’s sister Clara (Joachim was again the dedicatee); these are airy and gracious pieces, and the violinist is nicely partnered by Ott.

96kHz/192kHz/24-bit AIFF/ALAC/FLAC/WAV, Chesky Records (supplied by www. hdtracks. com) David Chesky is committed to fostering music education in young children and composed The Zephrytine as a fantasy ballet. The booklet PDF includes the narrative – in which a young boy meets a magical creature and travels to a utopian world where people are of all colours and ice cream grows on trees – along with vibrant illustrations by artist Ângela Vieira.

Stephanie Proot is a young Belgian pianist who trained in Antwerp, Paris and Brussels and attended various masterclasses – Bashkirov, Fleischer, Goode, et al – and has won several competition awards. She makes her debut plunging in at the deep end with Beethoven’s early F major, the two ‘quasi fantasia’ sonatas (the second the ‘Moonlight’) and – a brave try – the late A-flat. Recording in a dry Ghent studio, she plays a Yamaha Grand: it has decent presence but the album is sonically unremarkable. Proot has the necessary technical competence but not as yet the musical phrasing insights shown in the first recordings of Grimaud, Pires or Uchida, and her playing is somewhat mechanical.

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.

192kHz/24-bit FLAC/ALAC, Linn Records CKD 432 (supplied by www. linnrecords. com) This second Linn album by the young Japanese artist Kuniko Kato comprises arrangements, mostly for marimba, of well-known minimalist pieces by Steve Reich and Arvo Pärt. She also plays a solo work by Hywell Davies, Purl Ground, premiered by Kuniko at Cheltenham in 2011.

192kHz/24-bit FLAC/ALAC, Linn Records CKD 430 (supplied by www. linnrecords. com) The two hunting horns played by Anneke Scott and Joseph Walters make a glorious noise at the start of Concerto 1, and their duo in 1(v), 6m 25s-7m 27s, is as clean as a whisker. Similarly, 4(iii) seemingly holds no terrors for trumpeter David Blackadder.

Authentically Norwegian as Torvik and trio may be, Tranquil Fjord commences just as you might fear, the opening title track plinking a New Age path into a gentle guitar-led arrangement, meandering slowly through shallows rather regimented in their quantisation, and underlain by an intrusively full-width soundstage granted to the percussion of Hermund Nygård – close-miked snare brushes lent distracting prominence. These two qualities, forward percussion and ‘swinglessness’, continue even on speedier pieces such as ‘Kryssande’ and ‘Land Veg Helm’, bass and guitar each lacking a fully resolved space in either soundstage or equalisation, all three performers instead firing from the same place. When Torvik gives his guitar synth a few directionless refrains at the close of ‘Endelaus Veg’, it encapsulates the general meaninglessness of it all. JF Sound Quality: 70% Hi-Fi News Lab Report Unlike the ‘96kHz’ Mike Oldfield: Five Miles Out download (reviewed here) the limited ~20kHz bandwidth of this 24-bit recording is perfectly in keeping with its claimed 44.