Studio Masters

Dmitri Shostakovich: Under Stalin’s Shadow – Symphony No. 10 – Boston Symphony Orchestra, Andris Nelsons (2015)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96kHz | Time – 01:04:50 minutes | 1,24 GB | Genre: Classical
Official Digital Download – Source: highresaudio.com |  @ Deutsche Grammophon
Recorded: Boston, Symphony Hall, 4/2015

In their inaugural release on Deutsche Grammophon, the Boston Symphony Orchestra and its Music Director Andris Nelsons are heard in live performances of Dmitri Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 10 and the Passacaglia from his opera “Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk.”
This album is the first in a series of five live-performance CDs entitled “Shostakovich Under Stalin’s Shadow,” to encompass the composer’s symphonies 5-10 and other works written in the period from the mid-1930s, when Shostakovich fell from Stalin’s favor, to 1953, the year of the dictator’s death. The goal of this new BSO/DG partnership is a complete Shostakovich cycle led by Andris Nelsons, one of today’s most exciting young conductors, and among the last of his generation to train under the Soviet musical tradition.
Symphonies 5, 8, and 9, plus Shostakovich’s incidental music to “Hamlet,” will be recorded during the BSO’s 2015-16 season and released in a two-CD set in 2016. In summer 2017, a second two-disc set will include Symphonies 6 and 7 and incidental music from the composer’s Suite from “King Lear.”

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Franz Schubert – Piano Sonata D568; 6 Moments musicaux – Mitsuko Uchida (2001)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96kHz | Time – 01:07:32 minutes | 1,25 GB | Genre: Classical
Official Digital Download – Source: Qobuz |  @ Decca
Recorded: Grosser Saal, Musikverein, Vienna, August 2001

This is the penultimate issue in Mitsuko Uchida’s eight-album series, and thanks to her magical recreation of the E flat Sonata I’m already inclined to regard it as one of the best. Let me not make an exaggerated claim for the piece: it comes near the beginning of Schubert’s 12 completed piano sonatas, and the later ones are of course played more often because they’re greater. But this one is an enchantment, and weighing in at 31 minutes, as it does here, it sits proudly as the first of his grand four-movement sonatas, fully achieved and characteristic, purposeful and confident in the space it makes for itself.

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Franz Schubert – Fantasie D-Dur, Rondo h-Moll, Sonate A-Dur – Carolin Widmann, Alexander Lonquich (2012)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44.1kHz | Time – 01:01:56 minutes | 565 MB | Genre: Classical
Official Digital Download – Source: Qobuz |  @ ECM Records GmbH
Recorded: October 2010, Historischer Reitstadel, Neumarkt

Carolin Widmann, who received praise and awards both for her accounts of Schumann’s violin sonatas and for the recital disc “Phantasy of Spring” (with music of Feldman, Zimmermann, Schoenberg and Xenakis) now applies her acute interpretive sensibilities to Franz Schubert. Widmann and Alexander Lonquich (whose own New Series disc with music of Schumann and Holliger was also a critical success) play the C-Major Fantasy of 1827 and the Violin Sonata in A-Major of 1817, as well as the B-minor Rondo of 1826 (the only one of these works published in Schubert’s lifetime). This is duo playing at a very high level, as Hans-Klaus Jungheinrich emphasizes in the liner notes: “Not once does Carolin Widmann and Alexander Lonquich’s intelligent and empathetic reading devolve into the trivial state of music for a domineering violin with piano accompaniment. Instead we are treated to a magically iridescent poem of changing colours, melodies and counterpoints.”

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Masaaki Suzuki plays Bach Organ Works (2015)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 79:27 minutes | 1,41 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Master, Official Digital Download | Source: eClassical | Artwork: Covers & Digital booklet

The recipient of the 2012 City of Leipzig Bach Medal, Masaaki Suzuki has earned an enviable reputation as an interpreter of the music of Johann Sebastian Bach – as a reviewer in International Record Guide has put it: ‘With Suzuki you can hear Bach’s heart beat’. To a wide audience he is known as the director of Bach Collegium Japan, and the moving force behind the ensemble’s acclaimed recordings of Bach’s complete sacred cantatas. Perhaps less well known is that he began his career – at the age of 12! – playing the organ at church services in Kobe, where he was born. Suzuki has remained true to the organ throughout his life, and for BIS he has previously recorded Bach’s German Organ Mass, as well as programmes of Buxtehude and Sweelinck. He here appears on a disc which combines some of Bach’s best-loved works for the instrument, including the D minor Toccata and Fugue, the Partitas on ‘O Gott, du frommer Gott’, BWV 767, the Canonic Variations, BWV 769, and the celebrated Prelude and Fugue in E minor, BWV 548. The recording was made in Groningen’s Martinikerk, with Suzuki performing on the renowned organ, one of the most important and impressive in the Netherlands. (more…)

Jacqueline du Pré, Daniel Barenboim – Brahms: Cello Sonatas 1 & 2 (1968/2012)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 54:26 minutes | 1,05 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Master, Official Digital Download | Artwork: Front cover | @ EMI Classics

Acclaimed instrumentalists, Jacqueline du Pre and Daniel Barenboim, perform earlier masterpieces by Brahms. These sonatas written for cello and piano invoke the romantic style, interpreted superbly by the pair. The performances are expressive, graceful and reveal the pieces’ sheer tonal beauty. A vital addition to any music lover’s library. (more…)

Ravel – Bolero; Debussy – La Mer; Mussorgsky – Pictures At An Exhibition – Berliner Philharmoniker, Herbert von Karajan (1966/2015)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:14:49 minutes | 1,43 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Master, Official Digital Download | Source: Q0buz | @ Deutsche Grammophon
Recorded: 1965/1966 at Jesus-Christus-Kirche, Berlin, Germany

„Here are examples of ‘The Karajan Effect’ at its most positive, and sounding, in these new transfers, fractionally more open, focused and fresh than before, with the billowing bass moderated and the dynamic range extended. Along with Karajan’s own imaginative deployment of orchestral colour (to take one example: the extra gong with barely damped striker at the end of Pictures), the Berlin Jesus-Christus Kirche acoustics of these 1964-6 recordings add their own wonderful coloration and atmosphere (dark and cavernous at appropriate moments in Pictures). The 1980s Berlin Philharmonic DG remakes (in their remastered ‘Karajan Gold’ format) offer something closer to concert-hall reality (a cleaner more neutral sound) but, on the whole, the imaginative daring and the excited discovery of new realms of creative and technical possibility are missing; certainly the 1980s performances are less given to spontaneous ignition.

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