Nicolai Pfeffer & Felix Wahl – Brahms: Clarinet Sonatas, Op. 120 & Piano Pieces, Op. 119 (2018)
FLAC (tracks) 24-bit/96 kHz | Time – 56:45 minutes | 932 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Master, Official Digital Download | Booklet, Front Cover | © CAvi-music
There is no doubt that we owe the creation of Johannes Brahms’ last piano and chamber music works to his meeting with the Meiningen Court Orchestra’s exceptional clarinettist Richard Mühlfeld, who inspired Brahms to new heights of creativity. The complementary sonatas op. 120, with their interwoven motifs, are full in equal measure of exuberant joy, driving passion and moments of picturesque calm. A kaleidoscope of emotions, and a sublime, pioneering gift for his admirers and musical successors. In a subtle musical dialogue, Nicolai Pfeffer and Felix Wahl present a refreshing, high-contrast image of this late work, full of powerful yet lyrical nuance.
Neil Diamond – Up On The Roof: Songs From The Brill Building (1993/2016)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/192 kHz | Time – 55:57 minutes | 2,45 GB | Genre: Pop
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Universal Music
This is Diamond’s equivalent of, say, one of Barbra Streisand’s Broadway albums. Come to think of it, it’s Broadway that Diamond is returning to as well; specifically, the corner of 49th Street, where he and many others turned out songs for music publishers. Some of these songs were written there; most were only in the spirit of that modern Tin Pan Alley. Handling the work of his then-rivals, such as “Spanish Harlem,” “A Groovy Kind of Love,” and “River Deep – Mountain High,” Diamond adopts his usual hammy style (he always sounds like he thinks he’s a much better singer than he is). Peter Asher patented a neo-’60s production style in crafting oldies for Linda Ronstadt in the ’70s, and he does the same thing here, which is only to say that the album is not as overproduced as some of Diamond’s recent albums, not that Asher’s versions are any competition to Phil Spector’s originals. Actually, this record sounds exactly like you would expect it to: just call to mind a familiar song like “Will You Love Me Tomorrow” and imagine what it would sound like if Neil Diamond sang it. While this is clearly a holding action from the point of view of Diamond’s recording career, fans can decide for themselves whether it’s valid and, perhaps more problematic, necessary. You pays your money…
Neil Diamond – The Movie Album: As Time Goes By (1988/2016) [Official Digital Download 24bit/192kHz]
Neil Diamond – The Movie Album: As Time Goes By (1988/2016)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/192 kHz | Time – 01:07:03 minutes | 2,98 GB | Genre: Pop
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Geffen
On this lazy, nearly shameless album (two CDs that don’t even make it to 70 minutes combined), Neil Diamond visits movie songs past (“As Time Goes By”) and present (“My Heart Will Go On”) with stops along the way for takes on almost anything you would anticipate an album and artist like this would cover (“Unchained Melody”? There. “Can You Feel the Love Tonight”? Ditto. “Moon River”? Yep, it’s there.) Assisted by conductor Elmer Bernstein and an 80-piece orchestra, Diamond takes a 20-song stroll down film memory lane on The Movie Album: As Time Goes By with a bombast that often borders on parody. Oversinging like he’s never oversung before, Diamond makes even the most inspired tunes of the bunch (“And I Love Her,” “Can’t Help Falling in Love”) into Branson-worthy set pieces that are all melodramatic glitz and no style. A black stain on both Diamond and movies.
Neil Diamond – The Christmas Album, Vol. II (1994/2016)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/192 kHz | Time – 50:22 minutes | 2,21 GB | Genre: Pop
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Universal Music
Neil came up with a stocking full of unique arrangements of holiday perennials for this 1994 album. See what he does with The Hallelujah Chorus; Sleigh Ride; Away in a Manger; Winter Wonderland; The First Noel; Joy to the World , and more! (more…)
Nana Mouskouri – Forever Young (2018)
FLAC (tracks) 24-bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 01:01:15 minutes | 638 MB | Genre: Pop
Studio Master, Official Digital Download | Booklet, Front Cover | © Mercury
Nana Mouskouri is one of the most famous female singers, selling over 300 million albums worldwide and touring around the world. In her career, she has recorded more than 1550 songs in English, German, Spanish, French, Greek, Italian, Japanese and Dutch. In 2018, Nana will celebrate 60 years of success in music and releases her 134th record that is a covers album called Forever Young, featuring songs by Amy Winehouse, Leonard Cohen, Bryan Adams and Bob Dylan.
Momo Kodama – Point And Line: Debussy & Hosokawa Etudes (2017)
FLAC (tracks) 24-bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:19:21 minutes | 1,07 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Master, Official Digital Download | Booklet, Front Cover | © ECM New Series
Born in Osaka, educated at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Paris, Momo Kodama is well-placed to approach music from both Eastern and Western vantage points, as she does in this album which interweaves etudes of Claude Debussy (1862-1918) and Toshio Hosokawa (born 1955).
Both composers have similarly been border-crossers. Debussy, pointing to music of the future, looked to the Orient for inspiration. Hosokawa has combined aspects of Japanese and European tradition in his contemporary compositions. Momo Kodama: “In the music of Toshio Hosokawa I find elements close to Debussy: the freedom of form and tone colour, the sense of poetic design, with a wide range of lyricism and dynamics, between meditation and virtuoso development, between light and shade, between large gestures and minimalist refinement.”
„Point and Line“ is the pianist’s second ECM album and follows the widely-praised ‘La vallée des cloches’, with music of Ravel, Takemitsu and Messiaen, of which American Record Guide noted: “Kodama’s impeccable technique and facility for crystalline sounds makes for a mesmerizing program.”
Miles Davis And The Lighthouse All-Stars – At Last! (1953/1985/2016)
FLAC (tracks) 24-bit/192 kHz | Time – 39:33 minutes | 1,00 GB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Master, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Concord Records
Recorded live in September 1953 at the Lighthouse Café in Hermosa Beach, California but not released until 1985, this album captures Miles Davis jamming with the club’s house band, the Lighthouse All Stars. Chet Baker, on the bill at the Lighthouse that night, plays trumpet on two of these songs (though not with Davis); the two trumpeters are variously joined on these tunes by Rolf Ericson, Bob Cooper, Bud Shank, Lorraine Geller, Russ Freeman, Howard Rumsey and Max Roach.
“I sometimes jammed with some of the musicians of the Lighthouse and we made a record. At that time, Chet Baker (was known as one of) the best young jazz trumpeters. He was California. He played at the Lighthouse one day I went to jam. Chet was a pretty nice guy, cool and good instrumentalist. But he knew as well as I that he had much copied me. At the meeting, he told me afterwards that knowing I was in the room had made him nervous.”
Mieneke van der Velden, Wieland Kuijken & Fred Jacobs – Marais: Dialogues (2015)
FLAC (tracks) 24-bit/88,2 kHz | Time – 57:44 minutes | 1,06 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Master, Official Digital Download | Booklet, Front Cover | © Ramée
A noteworthy fact: Marais, in his five books of Pièces de viole, published only two suites for two viols and continuo. Aside from the two suites for three viols (Book IV), all the other pieces are intended for the solo instrument with accompaniment of harpsichord, theorbo or a second viol in different combinations.
These two particular suites are both found in Book I (1686). The addition of a second solo viol reinforces the character of the various parts: especially in the slow sections, Marais ideally emphasizes the sound of the two viols with long sostenuto lines and poignant dissonances. The Tombeau pour Mr. Meliton constitutes the absolute height of this. After Mieneke van der Velden’s recordings Hommages and Images, Dialogues completes the picture of the imposing sound world of Marin Marais’s music, magnified by the collaboration with the master Wieland Kuijken.
Michèle Dévérité – The Forquerays, or the Torments of the Soul, Vol. 2 (2018)
FLAC (tracks) 24-bit/48 kHz | Time – 01:58:26 minutes | 1,35 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Master, Official Digital Download | Booklet, Front Cover | © harmonia mundi
This recording presents for the first time the complete works of the Forqueray family – music that is powerful, virtuosic, fascinating, that touches our innermost being – and combines harpsichord pieces with pieces for viola da gamba and basso continuo. It includes the four early pieces by Antoine Forqueray from the Recueil de pieces de violle avec la basse tiré des meilleurs autheurs, and our transcription for two harpsichords of the pieces for three viols found in the Lille Manuscript, as a nod to the family practice of the Forquerays (transcription was a very widespread practice at the time).
Michèle Dévérité – The Forquerays, or the Torments of the Soul, Vol. 1 (2018)
FLAC (tracks) 24-bit/48 kHz | Time – 02:05:02 minutes | 1,45 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Master, Official Digital Download | Booklet, Front Cover | © harmonia mundi
The Forqueray family, father and son: thereupon hangs a dark tale. The father, Antoine (1672-1745), famous composer and gamba player, a musicien ordinaire de la chambre du roy from 1689, developed such a furious jealousy of his son Jean-Baptiste (1699-1782) that he had him thrown in jail at the age of 20. Only the intervention of his friends won the young virtuoso his freedom, and finally he succeeded his father as a musicien ordinaire de la chambre du roy in 1742, when his father was no longer in a position to object. In 1747, Jean-Baptiste won the privilege of publishing 29 of his father’s pieces for viol da gamba and three of his own pieces; he also published a transcription of these same pieces for harpsichord. It is these works that Michèle Dévérité is offering us on the harpsichord, joined by Kaori Uemuraon the viol da gamba and Ryo Terakado on the viola for the ensemble pieces. A magnificent undertaking, which, two and a half centuries after the break between the two Forquerays, brings them back together in the most striking manner. To complement the second volume, we are also treated to several works dedicated to the Forquerays, by Charles François Clément, Louis-Antoine Dornel, Claude François… uh, sorry: Claude-François Rameau, the son (another father-and-son pair), and two modern composers.