Scottish Chamber Orchestra – Beethoven: Music for Winds (2018) [Official Digital Download 24bit/192kHz]

Scottish Chamber Orchestra – Beethoven: Music for Winds (2018)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/192 kHz | Time – 55:11 minutes | 2,14 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Linn Records

All around the world, critics cheered the SCO Wind Soloists’ previous album of Mozart Divertimenti: ‘superb in every way’ (Fanfare), ‘a joy from start to finish’ (Europadisc), ‘sparkles with joy and chuckles with good humour’ (BBC Radio 3 ‘Record Review’).

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Sandro Zerafa – More Light (2017) [Official Digital Download 24bit/88,2kHz]

Sandro Zerafa – More Light (2017)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/88,2 kHz | Time – 55:24 minutes | 1014 MB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © jazz&people

Sandro Zerafa teams up with some of the most important musicians in the European jazz scene for this unique concert – bass player Yoni Zelnik, who can be heard with Avishai Cohen’s TRIVENI amongst others, Yonathan Avishai, who is currently touring with Omer Avital’s band, and Cuban drummer Lukmil Perez, who can be heard with Jacky Terrasson, Givoanni Mirabassi and Jean Michel Pilc.

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Scone Cash Players – As the Screw Turns (2019) [Official Digital Download 24bit/44,1kHz]

Scone Cash Players – As the Screw Turns (2019)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 37:50 minutes | 416 MB | Genre: Funk, Soul, R&B
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Flamingo Time

It seems like it was just yesterday that Scone Cash Players delivered their debut LP, “Blast Furnace” to the people and unexpectedly their follow up to one of my favorite albums of the year arrives at the door insisting that I immediately remove the shrink wrap and drop the needle down. With that said, Scone Cash Players have recorded another tight slice of grooves that elevates their sound from the previous effort and shows that they’re definitely going in the right direction. Organ funk, grit, deep grooves and plenty of soul is what you’re going to get on “As The Screw Turns”, a knockout 10 tracker long player of instrumental tunes as well as a few vocal cuts mixed in. For this album, they’ve enlisted a star studded cast to join including legend Naomi Shelton, Jason Joshua and John Dokes.

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Sandro Roy – Souvenir de Paris (2018) [Official Digital Download 24bit/88,2kHz]

Sandro Roy – Souvenir de Paris (2018)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/88,2 kHz | Time – 01:12:54 minutes | 1,32 GB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © SKIP Records

Young German violinist, returning with a project devoted to France as its thematic focus: amazingly mature and conceptually coherent in the choice of content, yet sparkling with facets that surprise again and again. “Souvenir De Paris” underscores Sandro Roy’s rare gift for picking and choosing from sources in classical music and Jazz in a remarkable way, for allowing his music to become a stand-alone cosmos marked by virtuoso performance, and all that on what may very well be the most difficult instrument of all, the violin. This album featuring Roby Lakatos, Jermaine Landsberger Trio and Marcel Löffler.

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Staatskapelle Dresden, Wolfgang Sawallisch – Schumann: The Four Symphonies, Ouverture, Scherzo & Finale (1973/2015) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Staatskapelle Dresden, Wolfgang Sawallisch – Schumann: The Four Symphonies, Ouverture, Scherzo & Finale (1973/2015)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 02:28:00 minutes | 2,93 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Warner Classics

Wolfgang Sawallisch and the Staatskapelle Dresden make fitting and eloquent interpreters of Schumann’s four symphonies, each a highly distinctive work. The city of Dresden was the composer’s home for six years, while Sawallisch was a keen advocate of his large-scale work. For all the energy and passion that Sawallisch communicates in these performances, he does not impose himself on the music; he is content to illuminate and reinforce Schumann’s inspired, if sometimes idiosyncratic arguments.

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Sarah Vaughan – The Magic of Sarah Vaughan (2016) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Sarah Vaughan – The Magic of Sarah Vaughan (2016)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 24:38 minutes | 496 MB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © High Fidelity Masters

Possessor of one of the most wondrous voices of the 20th century, Sarah Vaughan ranked with Ella Fitzgerald and Billie Holiday in the very top echelon of female jazz singers. She often gave the impression that with her wide range, perfectly controlled vibrato, and wide expressive abilities, she could do anything she wanted with her voice. Although not all of her many recordings are essential (give Vaughan a weak song and she might strangle it to death), Sarah Vaughan’s legacy as a performer and a recording artist will be very difficult to match in the future.

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Philippe Sly, John Charles Britton – Schubert Sessions: Lieder with Guitar (2016) [Official Digital Download 24bit/192kHz]

Philippe Sly, John Charles Britton – Schubert Sessions: Lieder with Guitar (2016)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/192 kHz | Time – 59:27 minutes | 2,00 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Groupe Analekta, Inc

A shy, modest genius, Franz Peter Schubert never held an official musical position, unlike his contemporaries. Living frugally, surrounded by friends from the artistic and literary worlds, Schubert was the focal point of occasional informal artistic gatherings dubbed “Schubertiades”. These meetings were an occasion for him to show off his most recent compositions, foremost among them his lieder. Many of these – he wrote over 600 in all – may very well have taken shape at the guitar; Schubert learned to play the instrument early on in life, and he owned several instruments, which he would play before breakfast, occasionally honouring the impromptu visit of a friend with the performance of a freshly composed lied. Schubert’s financial situation meant he could not afford a piano, so the guitar was one way he could hear how his compositions sounded. Since at the time, the instrument enjoyed great popularity, many music publishers, including Schubert’s publisher Diabelli, offered transcriptions of his works for guitar. It is unsurprising, then, that the first edition of the lieder cycle Die Schöne Müllerin – from which Der Müller und der Bach on this recording is taken – was published with a guitar accompaniment. Uncontestably a master of the lied, Schubert may also be considered as one of the forefathers of the modern song. From the time of Ars nova (new art) – the 14th century musical style of which the poet and musician Guillaume de Machaut was among the principal proponents – lyric forms underwent numerous poetical and stylistic innovations that ultimately led to the first strophic songs for solo voice in the early 16th century. Gradually, lyric forms from the age of the troubadour – when the lute, cousin of the guitar, was a preferred means of expression – converged into the German lied.

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Samuele Telari – Bach: Goldberg Variations (2021) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Samuele Telari – Bach: Goldberg Variations (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:32:51 minutes | 1,69 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Delphian Records Ltd.

Telari’s instrument is essential to his conception of this eternally fresh, kaleidoscopic work. The accordion’s bellows bring out and intensify dynamic contrasts in the slower variations, while the sparkling, faster ones are powered by a pure virtuosity that flows along the two manuals, imitating or chasing one another in resonant stereophony. Bach’s immortal masterpiece shines with new light here, keyboard dexterity meeting a string-like expressivity, both heightened by Telari’s interpretative subtlety and impeccable control.

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Samuel Strouk, François Salque, Adrien Moignard & Jérémie Arranger – Loco Cello (2019) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Samuel Strouk, François Salque, Adrien Moignard & Jérémie Arranger – Loco Cello (2019)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 57:55 minutes | 1,07 GB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Universal Music Distribution Deal

“Loco Cello” is an ambitious musical adventure that forges close ties between classical music, jazz, and world music. Four musicians breathe together and reinvent the notion of string quartet by combining two guitars, a cello, and a double bass, around a melodic and swing air chamber music. A quartet composed of two duets, one rather classic, which combines the guitarist Samuel Strouk with the cellist François Salque. The other duet, between guitarist Adrien Moignard and bassist Jérémie Arranger, is much more jazz and swing. Loco Cello is a string quartet of modern times, an atypical quartet of chamber, where emotion, complicity and virtuosity go hand in hand. An organic music, alive and moving, where tenderness rubs tension expressing a feeling tinged with both joy and urgency. It is a unique musical approach, where the classic rubato is tinged with rhythmic swing, and where the musical boundaries are abolished through a colorful, contrasted and sensual palette, served by a singular and particularly pregnant group sound.

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Samuel Blais, David Liebman – Cycling (2014) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Samuel Blais, David Liebman – Cycling (2014)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 49:14 minutes | 1,06 GB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Effendi Records

There’s no accounting for how great music comes together on record. Sometimes everything is meticulously laid out for months or years in advance, as artists use planning and implementation to their advantage in the creative process; other times, sparks just fly at spur of the moment sessions. Cycling falls into the latter category.

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Marc-André Hamelin – Schubert: Piano Sonata & Impromptus (2018) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Marc-André Hamelin – Schubert: Piano Sonata & Impromptus (2018)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:21:52 minutes | 1,24 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Hyperion Records

The heavenly lengths of Schubert’s last piano sonata and second set of impromptus: Marc-André Hamelin captures the other-worldliness of these sublime, quintessentially ‘late’ works as do few other pianists.

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Kansas City Symphony, Michael Stern – Adam Schoenberg: American Symphony, Finding Rothko, Picture Studies (2017) [Official Digital Download 24bit/176,4kHz]

Kansas City Symphony, Michael Stern – Adam Schoenberg: American Symphony, Finding Rothko, Picture Studies (2017)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/176,4 kHz | Time – 01:04:57 minutes | 1,80 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Reference Recordings

One of the top 10 most performed living classical composers in the United States, Adam Schoenberg was commissioned by the Kansas City Symphony to write the American Symphony and Picture Studies featured here, a collaboration with conductor Michael Stern that Schoenberg calls “extraordinary.” The performances were brilliantly captured by the Grammy-winning team of engineer Keith O. Johnson and producer David Frost.

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Scherzi Musicali and Nicolas Achten – Jean-Noël Hamal: Motets (2021) [Official Digital Download 24bit/192kHz]

Scherzi Musicali and Nicolas Achten – Jean-Noël Hamal: Motets (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/192 kHz | Time – 01:08:34 minutes | 2,55 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Musique en Wallonie

Jean-Noël Hamal’s musical language is a perfect reflection of this transitional period in which the Baroque galant style merges into the classical style. One senses in Hamal’s music a communicative vitality, a charmingly poetic note, a keen sense of elegant melody and a theatricality in dynamic contrasts which in some ways evokes the Mannheim school. As soon as he was able, he exploited the ample space available by writing works for two choirs and two orchestras. He seems also to have had a very pronounced preference for major tonalities (he even went so far as to write an astonishingly cheerful Dies irae in C major) and for very readable harmonies, although these sometimes risk being too predictable or conventional. But he was also capable of being a visionary: by their tripartite structure and the autonomous form his symphonies make him a precursor of the classical symphony. He is equally capable of entirely unexpected surprises and attractive details, as is apparent in his motets delivered respecting the practices then in force in Liège by Nicolas Achten and Scherzi Musicali ensemble, mixing subtlety and theatricality.

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Scherzi Musicali & Nicolas Achten – Colonna: O splendida dies (2019) [Official Digital Download 24bit/192kHz]

Scherzi Musicali & Nicolas Achten – Colonna: O splendida dies (2019)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/192 kHz | Time – 58:39 minutes | 2,11 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Ricercar

Giovanni Battista Colonna (1637-95) spent most of his career in Bologna as maestro di cappella of the basilica of San Petronio. Since he had at his disposal this imposing building with its two choir organs, well known to lovers of the instrument, and its very generous acoustics, Colonna wrote a large number of sacred compositions for imposing vocal and instrumental forces. But, in a more intimate vein, he also devoted two collections to the repertory of ‘small motets’. The pieces recorded here come from the 1681 set of Motetti a due e tre voci (1681). They display a wide variety of formulas, combining traditional elements and innovative aspects that were to be further developed in the following generations. These gems are highly representative of the style of small motets that heralds the stile concertante. They are characterised by various combinations of voices (from solo recitative to a mixture of vocal duets or trios in different scorings) and a broad range of formal structures bound up with the very nature of the texts.

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Deborah Cachet, Nicolas Achten & Scherzi Musicali – Scarlatti: O penosa lontananza – Cantate da Camera (2018) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Deborah Cachet, Nicolas Achten & Scherzi Musicali – Scarlatti: O penosa lontananza – Cantate da Camera (2018)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:10:59 minutes | 1,39 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Ricercar

In this new recording, Scherzi Musicali explores the fascinating world of Alessandro Scarlatti’s Arcadian cantatas: the six mostly unpublished cantatas selected here sublimate the affects of nymphs and shepherds far from their beloved. Both the arias and the recitatives are exceptionally beautiful, varied and colourful: the accomplished theatrical sense of these cantatas has stimulated the soprano Deborah Cachet, the baritone Nicolas Achten and the abundant instrumental forces that provide a setting for their voices to a passionate and captivating realisation, in which poetry, rhetoric, inventive ornamentation and opulence of sound reign supreme.

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