Giuliano Carmignola, Accademia dell’Annunciata & Riccardo Doni – The Three Seasons of Antonio Vivaldi (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 03:29:37 minutes | 4,04 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Arcana
The violin concerto accompanied Vivaldi throughout his life. And more than any other genre, the circa 220 extant violin concertos reflect the biographical and professional events relating to the “Red Priest”. Hence the idea – proposed, we believe, for the first time on disc – of recording 18 concertos, divided into three “seasons” that illustrate the evolution of Vivaldi’s art through the three different stages of his career: the early years, his maturity and the late period.
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George Szell – Ludwig van Beethoven conducted by George Szell live (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 01:31:17 minutes | 940 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Archipel
Immerse yourself in the timeless brilliance of Ludwig van Beethoven’s music with this captivating album: a remarkable live performance led by the legendary conductor George Szell, accompanied by the virtuoso pianist Rudolf Firkušný and the prestigious Czech Philharmonic Orchestra. Released by Gebhart, the album captures the essence of Beethoven’s compositions, infusing them with passion and precision. The symphonic grandeur and expressive nuances come alive under Szell’s masterful direction, while Firkušný’s piano prowess adds depth and beauty to the performances. This album is a testament to the enduring power of Beethoven’s music, brought to life by exceptional musicians in a live setting that resonates with energy and emotion.
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George Enescu – Beethoven: Violin Concerto in D Major, Op. 61 – J.S. Bach: Violin Concerto No. 2 in E Major, BWV 1042 (Remastered 2023) (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 01:03:23 minutes | 344 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Archipel
George Enescu (August 19, 1881 in Liveni Vîrnav, today in Botoșani County; † May 4, 1955 in Paris) was a Romanian composer, violinist and conductor.
Enescu was already playing the violin at the age of four, composing at the age of five, and among his first teachers was the composer Eduard Caudella. from 1888 to 1894 he studied in Vienna, among others with Joseph Hellmesberger junior, Ludwig Ernst and Robert Fuchs. Already in 1889 he made his public debut as a violinist. From 1895 to 1899 he also studied composition at the Paris Conservatory with André Gedalge, Jules Massenet and Gabriel Fauré, and his classmates included Maurice Ravel, Florent Schmitt and Charles Koechlin. in 1898, his Opus 1, the Poème roumain, was performed at the Concerts Colonne; in the same year he began conducting in Bucharest.
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Kinan Azmeh, Brooklyn Rider & Mathias Kunzli – Starlighter (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 58:55 minutes | 1,06 GB | Genre: Classical, World
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © In A Circle Records
Celebrating musical relationships spanning over a decade the omnivorous string quartet Brooklyn Rider and Syrian clarinet virtuoso Kinan Azmeh join forces in a unique collaborative program that expands the notion of the clarinet quintet into a 21st century ensemble.
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Frauke Rauterberg – Van Eyck: Der Fluyten Lust-Hof (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 51:28 minutes | 775 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © primTON
Jacob van Eyck (around 1590 – 1657) is one of the most important musicians of the 17th century in the Netherlands. After making a name for himself as a carillonneur with his improvements to several carillons in the Netherlands, he was put in charge of the bells of all parish churches and the town hall in Utrecht in 1628 and was given the title “Director of the Bell Works”. His recorder playing, which he showed in public parks and in the Utrecht churchyard, has come down to us in several prints. The “FLUYTEN LUST-HOF” (printed 1649/1654) is to this day the most extensive collection in European music history with works for a recorder solo. In addition to some free forms, this is a collection of variations on song and dance melodies that were well known at the time, which owe their special status to van Eyck’s virtuoso art of improvisation. The “FLUYTEN LUST-HOF” includes almost 150 works.
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Franz Konwitschny – Anton Bruckner Symphonies 8 & 9 conducted by Franz Konwitschny (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 02:23:50 minutes | 2,31 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Archipel
Franz Konwitschny (* August 14, 1901 in Fulnek, North Moravia; † July 28, 1962 in Belgrade) was a German conductor.
Konvichny came from a Moravian family of musicians. From 1920 to 1923 he first took violin lessons at the Academy of the Musikverein in Brno, before becoming a pupil of Hans Bassermann at the Conservatory of Music in Leipzig from April 1923 to 1925. During this time he was temporarily employed as a violinist and violist in the Gewandhaus Orchestra. in 1925 Konwitschny became a member of the Fitzner Quartet in Vienna as a violist and went to Stuttgart in 1927, first as a accompanist, since 1930 as 1st Kapellmeister at the Staatstheater. At the beginning of the 1933/34 season, he went to Freiburg im Breisgau as musical director of the Freiburg Philharmonic Orchestra, where he was appointed general music director in 1934. In 1938 he became music director and musical director of the Opera in Frankfurt am Main.
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Johanna Fridolfsson – Sandvargen – Live från Göteborgsoperan (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 51:37 minutes | 583 MB | Genre: Classical, Opera
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Overseas
Sit down with the Sand Wolf under a starry sky where everyone is welcome. The first performance of a children’s opera based on Åsa Lind’s much-loved trilogy. Recommended for children aged 6 to 10.
Zackarina lives in a house by the sea with her parents. From the sand on the beach, she digs out a new friend, the clever Sand Wolf. While playing together, they explore existential questions and the audience also gets involved. This poetic story combines the everyday with the existential, all the while with humour, warmth and respect.
The children’s opera Sandvargen (The Sand Wolf) is based on Åsa Lind’s acclaimed, August Prize nominated trilogy, now brought to life with music. This philosophical opera is written by Johanna Fridolfsson and Malin Aghed and directed by Emelie Sigelius.
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Frankie and the Witch Fingers – Data Doom (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 41:29 minutes | 494 MB | Genre: Rock
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © RAS – Greenway
Los Angeles psych-punk quartet Frankie and the Witch Fingers have returned with their seventh studio album Data Doom, due September 1 via The Reverberation Appreciation Society / Greenway Records. To ring in the announcement, the band has shared album highlight “Mild Davis” with a mind-bending animated music video. Inspired by Miles Davis’ early-70s electric work, the track’s dizzying 7/4 meter winds through chunky riffs, commanding vocals and proggy synths before crash-landing in a minefield of angular guitar harmonies.
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Joan Sebastian – Joan Sebastian con Mariachi (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/192 kHz | Time – 32:01 minutes | 1,19 GB | Genre: Latin
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Craft Recordings
Experience the soul-stirring melodies of Mexican icon Joan Sebastian in con Mariachi, a musical journey that beautifully fuses his heartfelt lyrics with the vibrant sounds of mariachi. Released through the collaboration between Musart-Balboa and Concord, this album is a testament to the enduring charm of traditional Mexican music. Joan Sebastian’s passionate vocals, paired with the rich instrumentation of mariachi, create an enchanting tapestry of emotion and culture.
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Jakob Dinesen, Anders Christensen, Laust Sonne – Moonlight Drive (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 44:54 minutes | 455 MB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © April Records & Music Co.
Jakob Dinesen, Anders Christensen and Laust Sonne are three heavyweights of Danish music, united by their all-embracing approach to music making. Their careers have seen them involved with household names of contemporary jazz including Aaron Parks and Kurt Rosenwinkel, afrobeat legend Tony Allen, popular Danish stadium rock band D-A-D and everything in between.
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Jake Shimabukuro – Grateful (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/88,2 kHz | Time – 01:35:58 minutes | 1,51 GB | Genre: World
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © JS Records
(Los Angeles, August 1, 2023) – On September 8th , the acclaimed Hawai’i-born ‘ukulele player Jake Shimabukuro will release Grateful, his most personal project to-date, featuring twenty-two collaborations with a who’s who of Hawai`i-based artists, from Henry Kapono to Kawika Kahiapo, Brother Noland to Raiatea Helm, Justin Kawika Young to Del Beazley and John Cruz to Kimié Miner.
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Jacob Leuschner – The Degenhof Sessions (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:14:28 minutes | 1,11 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Genuin
Once upon a time… at the heyday of the piano, between 1880 and the Second World War, when nearly every pianist was also a composer and arranger. The distinction between interpretation, arrangement, and composition is not always clear-cut nor decisive – the only important thing is the delightful effect of these gems for piano, which pianist Jacob Leuschner, who has been exploring the repertoire of this “Golden Age of the Piano” for decades, has recorded for his new GENUIN CD. The names Leopold Godowsky, Ignaz Friedman, Federico Mompou can be found there, as well as a premiere recording by the Dutchman Dirk Schäfer. These are intimate piano moments that, played enchantingly and without the noise of shellac records, nevertheless bring their era back to life before our ears.
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Jackson do Pandeiro – Mutirão (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 26:37 minutes | 296 MB | Genre: Latin
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © WM Brazil
It is an album that I like a lot too, I really like when the mix highlights the seven-string guitar, the counter-balancing ukulele and Severo’s accordion eating loose.
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Forma Antiqva, María Hinojosa, Aarón Zapico – La Caramba (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:00:12 minutes | 1,17 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Winter & Winter
In 2019, the head of Cardinal Belluga [Motril, 1662 – Roma, 1743] fell and rolled along the floor. The stern, skull-capped, sculpted head of the moralist from Motril could not bear to face the Teatro Calderón de la Barca in aeternum, and so detached itself from the rest of his body. The fevered imagination of Luis Antonio de Belluga y Moncada regarded theatre, music, dance and, above all, women as the devil’s tools for inoculating man with sin. He recorded this in hundreds of pages and pastoral letters, where he detailed, with suspicious delight, the potential »gravely sinful« circumstances arising from dancing likely to encourage groping, the adornments and measure- ments of women’s clothing, and the comedies and sainetes that he implored Philip V to ban. Nevertheless, divine intentions are inscrutable. Seven years after his death, the very antithesis of his being was born in Motril: María Antonia Vallejo Fernández, one of the most popular and influential artists of the last third of the 18th century. Known as La Caramba, she became the true quintessence of the sin envisaged by her illustrious fellow countryman: star of the sainete and the tonadilla, actress, singer, dancer, entrepreneur, free woman and mistress of several lovers. In short, a charismatic eighteenth-century ‘influencer’ capable of moving the masses, upsetting the powers that be, and dictating fashions in dress and adornment—those that the cardinal said caused »infinite offences to God«. Thanks to the tireless work of this woman ahead of her time, today we enjoy countless musical treasures that sparkle with audacity, brashness and wit, embodied in that genre, tonadilla escénica, which is yet to be studied in full.
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Christian Elsner, Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin, Marek Janowski – Franz Schubert: Lieder (2015)
DSF Stereo DSD64/2.82MHz | Time – 01:02:55 minutes | 2,49 GB | Genre: Classical
Source: ISO SACD | © Channel Classics Records B.V. | Front Cover, Booklet
Given his magnificent achievement in the field of art song, and the vast volume and consistently high quality of his Lieder oeuvre, it is not surprising that Schubert’s songs have been recorded numerous times. It is not surprising either that many composers, such as Franz Liszt, Johannes Brahms, Benjamin Britten, Hector Berlioz, Max Reger and Anton Webern made arrangements of Schubert’s songs. What is surprising, however, is the fact that these arrangements —made by some of the greatest composers in musical history—are so seldom heard either in concert or on record.
With the release of this album, hopefully that situation will change. It combines 17 Schubert compositions, of which 13 were orchestrated by late-romantic German composer Reger Max, and four by a member of the Second Viennese School, Anton Webern. When listening to these songs, the listener will discover that these arrangements are made with such craftsmanship that they themselves became unparalleled works of art. The performers on this SACD are the Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin and German tenor Christian Elsner, conducted by Maestro Marek Janowski. The album’s accompanying booklet contains the lyrics to the songs both in German and English, as well as programme notes and artists’ biographies.
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