Markus Schäfer & Zvi Meniker – Schubert: The Small Song Cycles (2021) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Markus Schäfer & Zvi Meniker – Schubert: The Small Song Cycles (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:10:08 minutes | 1,28 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Passacaille

In addition to his famous large-scale song cycles, Schubert also composed and published numerous smaller song compilations. Some of these “miniature cycles” consist of songs written at different times and under different circumstances, but which Schubert himself assembled on the basis of thematic and textual connections. The selected cycles appeared in print during Schubert’s publishing career of just eight years. Today, these songs are usually performed as individual works and taken out of context – here they are presented in the order carefully planned by the composer, just as they were heard at the famous “Schubertiades”.

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Markus Maskuniitty – Schumann, Saint-Saëns & Glière: Works for Horn & Orchestra (2019) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Markus Maskuniitty – Schumann, Saint-Saëns & Glière: Works for Horn & Orchestra (2019)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 48:13 minutes | 828 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Ondine

Markus Maskuniitty’s debut recording together with the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra together with its chief conductor Sakari Oramo, showcases four concertante works for horn and orchestra covering a period of one hundred years (from 1849 to 1951). Robert Schumann described the horn as the ‘soul of the orchestra’ and he had a profound affinity with the instrument. The most substantial of Schumann’s works featuring the horn is the Konzertstück for four horns and orchestra, Op. 86. Schumann considered the work as one of his best achievements as a composer. During 1849, Schumann wrote a total of three works featuring the valve horn. The Adagio and Allegro for horn and piano, Op. 70 may be considered a precursor to the Konzertstück and is a central work in the Romantic horn repertoire. This recording includes an orchestration by conductor Ernest Ansermet. Camille Saint-Saëns wrote a large number of concertante works, including a masterfully crafted concertpiece for horn and orchestra in 1887. It highlights Saint-Saëns’s mature skills in orchestral writing and as a composer of solo instrumental music. Final piece of the recording is Reinhold Glière’s Horn Concerto. Completed in 1951, it was the composer’s swansong. In this romantic concerto one can hear echoes of Tchaikovsky and other great masters of Russian classical music.

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Markus Kühnis – Engelberg Experience (2021) [Official Digital Download 24bit/192kHz]

Markus Kühnis – Engelberg Experience (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/192 kHz | Time – 01:12:22 minutes | 2,59 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Willowhayne Records

This release (the latest in Willowhayne Records’ Experience series) showcases the organ in the abbey at Engelberg, Switzerland. Built by Goll and restored by Graf, this instrument comprises 9000 pipes, spread over four manuals with 137 stops. Among Markus Kühnis’ teachers were Jean Langlais and Hans Vollenweider. This new album is a welcome departure from a traditional organ programme, being instead a collection of the artist’s own transcriptions, all of which are played with astonishing virtuosity and are guaranteed to make the listener smile. There is something here for everyone from Rossini’s William Tell Overture to Mexican dances.

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Markus Howell – Get Right! (2019) [Official Digital Download 24bit/88,2kHz]

Markus Howell – Get Right! (2019)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/88,2 kHz | Time – 54:20 minutes | 1,06 GB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Posi-Tone Records

Alto saxophonist Markus Howell unleashes a big sound on his strong debut, “Get Right!” The album features a well-balanced program of Howell’s exciting compositions along with a few tasty covers thrown in for good measure. Howell is joined on the date by front line special guests trombonist Michael Dease and trumpet player Joe Magnarelli, and receives solid support from his rhythm section of pianist Art Hirahara, bassist Rodney Whitaker, and drummer Luther Allison. This hard-hitting session really swings solidly from beginning to end, and will certainly delight straight forward jazz fans everywhere. We feel confident our ardent and dedicated listeners will elicit an engaging response when Markus Howell’s dynamic performances suggest an earful of good reasons for them to “Get Right!”

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Markus Becker – Reger: Piano Concerto & Solo works (2019) [Official Digital Download 24bit/48kHz]

Markus Becker – Reger: Piano Concerto & Solo works (2019)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 58:57 minutes | 523 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © CAvi-music

Back when Reger was writing his Piano Concerto, 1910, Debussy was working on La Mer and Stravinsky his Firebird. Vienna was becoming the crucible of the new dodecaphonism style. Reger kept his distance from all these tendencies, preferring to explore his own path, which, while sometimes difficult, was always marked by polyphony and counterpoint. His music’s architecture was always made up of self-contained cells, like a kind of careful patchwork in which the various elements didn’t always seem to relate to each other. Just listen (or re-listen, rather) carefully to the Concerto and you will get a taste of this juxtaposition of modernity with a desire to remain rooted in the past. Markus Becker (who recorded all of Reger’s solo piano works over twenty years) rounds off the collection with the Épisodes, written in the same year as the Concerto, but in an almost-miniaturist style – which just goes to show that all of Reger’s work isn’t marked by gigantism as these pieces all clock in at three or four minutes each. In them, the composer returns to the path of his great inspirations: the later Brahms and Beethoven’s final works including the Bagatelles.

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Markus Becker – Haydn: Piano Sonatas (2016) [Official Digital Download 24bit/48kHz]

Markus Becker – Haydn: Piano Sonatas (2016)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 01:15:04 minutes | 670 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © CAvi-music

This music may seem easy to grasp at first glance: so much seems clear and straightforward. However, once you take a closer look and spend more time playing and listening to Haydn’s music, it develops an endless, multifaceted life of its own. It becomes more concrete and at the same time more mysterious. Unexpected turns of phrase, sudden occurrences, humorous juxtapositions and startling asymmetries are just as much a part of this music as its extended melodic arcs that make the piano sing. Haydn’s music forms an intimate bond between song and speech. In each movement of the ca. 60 piano sonatas he wrote, we meet a personality, an unmistakeable character, evoked in detail.

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Markus Becker – Haydn: Piano Works II (2021) [Official Digital Download 24bit/48kHz]

Markus Becker – Haydn: Piano Works II (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 01:10:38 minutes | 601 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © CAvi-music

Haydn’s piano sonatas have thrilled me since childhood. This music may seem easy to grasp at first glance: so much seems clear and straightforward. However, once you take a closer look and spend more time playing and listening to Haydn’s music, it develops an endless, multifaceted life of its own. It becomes more concrete and at teh same time it develops an endless, multifaceted life of its own. It becomes more concrete and at teh same time more mysterious. Unexpected turns of phrase, sudden occurences, humorous juxtapositions and startling asymmetries are just as much a part of this music as its extended melodic arcs that make the piano sing. Haydn’s music forms an intimate bond between song and speech. In each movement of the ca. 60 piano sonatas he wrote, we meet a personality, an unmistakeable character, evoked in detail. Haydn was long viewed as teh mere forerunner of vienna Classicism – Mozart and Beethoven’s Papa, so to speak. His sonatas were mainly regarded as witty, useful pedagogical material. Several generations seem to have been unaware of his profoundly nuanced approach. Perhaps, however, Haydn’s keyboard oeuvre might require even better interpreters than the works written by his towering colleagues. One cannot clothe this music in an adequate form without applying a great deal of fantasy in one’s choice of timbres, along with a keen sense for musical thetoric and careful regard for phrasing. Most of all, the Haydn performer should be able to modify the entire timbre effect and redistribute the balance among parts from one moment to the next. We must not forget that he was born way back in 1732: Haydn thus still had one foot in the Baroque age, as one can tell from the latent polyphony and frequent figures of musical rhetoric. His variegated types of articulation cover a wide spectrum: dozens of nuances fill out the range between Haydn’s profound, songlike legato and his humorously accentuated staccato. Here is not where we will find Beethoven’s force and dramatic vigor, neither Mozart’s ethereal beauty. Haydn wrote a music of profound humanity, with a basic outlook similar to what the German Romantics called humor’: a reflection of human life with all its beauties, unfathomable depths, hopes, losses, crises and joys, all shouldered with a large dose of passion and irony.

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Markus Becker – Beethoven: Piano & Winds (2020) [Official Digital Download 24bit/48kHz]

Markus Becker – Beethoven: Piano & Winds (2020)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 01:05:02 minutes | 613 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © CAvi-music

While string instruments gave rise to a new repertoire of chamber music at the end of the 18th century with new forms emerging such as the quartet and its derivatives, quintets, septet or octet, the same could not be said for wind instruments since their construction was constantly changing, preventing a cohesive sound when it came to playing together. These counter-productive technical constraints caused a delay in terms of new works.

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Marko Ylonen, Tampere Philharmonic Orchestra & John Storgårds – Vasks: Symphony No. 3 – Cello Concerto (2015) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Marko Ylonen, Tampere Philharmonic Orchestra & John Storgårds – Vasks: Symphony No. 3 – Cello Concerto (2015)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:16:56 minutes | 1,48 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © 2xHD – Ondine

The Tampere Philharmonic, one of Scandinavia’s foremost symphony orchestras, is led by John Storgårds on this album dedicated to Pēteris Vasks, spotlighting the Third Symphony, a one-movement piece of spiritually deep and emotionally compelling music. Also included here is the Latvian composer’s Cello Concerto, a highly personal and moving work that reflects suffering under the Soviet regime and the strength required to survive. It features soloist Marko Ylönen, who specializes in contemporary repertoire.

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Marko Topchii – Guitar Recital: Marko Topchii (2018) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Marko Topchii – Guitar Recital: Marko Topchii (2018)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 58:39 minutes | 955 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Naxos

Marko Topchii, winner of the 2017 Michele Pittaluga Guitar Competition, has selected a rich and varied repertoire ranging from neo-Romanticism to serialism, each work offering a unique vision of the instrument’s technical and expressive capabilities. Antonio Jose’s Sonata is remarkably inventive, bringing a new language to ancient dance forms, while Frank Martin’s Quatre Pieces breves, written in the same year, offers the flourish and vigor of contemporary harmonic vocabulary. Ronald Dyens’ Libra Sonatine is one of the most virtuosic and brilliant of late 20th-century guitar works. Ukranian-born guitarist Marko Topchii, has been the winner of more than 40 international guitar competitions. He has performed at Carnegie Hall, the Salle Cortot, Yamaha Ginza Hall, and at the Tchaikovsky Hall. He often performs with orchestras, having performed more than ten concertos for guitar and orchestra. He is sponsored by the D’Addario Strings Company and records with a guitar made by Jim Redgate.

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Marketa Irglova – Muna (2014) [Official Digital Download 24bit/88,2kHz]

Marketa Irglova – Muna (2014)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/88,2 kHz | Time – 51:47 minutes | 918 MB | Genre: Folk, Piano, Singer-Songwriter
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Anti – Epitaph

The second solo outing from the Czechoslovakian singer/songwriter who rose to fame in 2007 after winning a Best Original Song Oscar for “Falling Slowly” (co-written with Frames singer Glen Hansard under the Swell Season moniker), Muna utilizes the talents of 27 musicians (choir, strings, orchestral percussion) and was inspired by, according to Irglová, Jesus Christ Superstar and author Neale Donald Walsch’s book trilogy Conversations with God. Muna, which means “remembering” in Icelandic, is a gospel record through and through, but it also reflects the rugged natural beauty of the land in which it was birthed. Produced with great warmth by Irglová’s partner Sturla Mio Thorisson, the 11-track collection begins and ends with the choir incantation “You can have whatever you can dream of,” and that simple edict of hope forms the basis, at least ideologically, for everything that lies in between. Lyrically, Muna reads a bit like scripture, even going so far as to intone The Lord’s Prayer on the stark and stoic “Without a Map,” and the album’s unwavering religiosity makes for a rather overly serious listen, especially if one doesn’t share the same spiritual persuasion. That said, it’s a musically rich audio tome that rarely overplays its hand, despite the fact that it took a small army to create it, and standout cuts like “Point of Creation” and “The Leading Bird,” with their hymn-like group vocals, gentle strings, and soft piano, emit a monastic aura that is undeniably comforting.

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Markéta Čepická, Czech Chamber Philharmonic Orchestra Pardubice & Dario Salvi – Auber: Overtures, Vol. 2 (2020) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Markéta Čepická, Czech Chamber Philharmonic Orchestra Pardubice & Dario Salvi – Auber: Overtures, Vol. 2 (2020)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:01:13 minutes | 1,98 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Naxos

The second volume in this series continues to explore little-known examples of Auber’s elegant and refined operatic music. Julie was his first stage work, its fantasia-like beauty foreshadowing the operas, opéras-comiques and lyric dramas to come. Striking melodies and haunting episodes abound in these overtures and entr’actes, and there is restrained yet fragrant Iberian colour in the overture to Léocadie. The Violin Concerto is lightly scored and gentle, with a tarantella-like finale full of folk vitality.

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Mark Wonder – Remz of the Dragon Slayer (2020) [Official Digital Download 24bit/44,1kHz]

Mark Wonder – Remz of the Dragon Slayer (2020)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 47:54 minutes | 542 MB | Genre: Reggae
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Oneness Records

Out of a stable of contemporaries, Mark has risen to establish himself as a pillar in the roots and culture arena. Commonly known as the “Dragon Slayer” his influences include American R&B icons of the 60’s and 70’s. His vocal styling and spot on intonation is reminiscent of artists such as Curtis Mayfield, Sam Cooke, Otis Redding and Marvin Gaye. Drawing from the greats of Jamaican roots Artists such as Burning Spear, Bob Andy and Dennis Brown, he is committed to the tradition of marrying his militant message with melody in a captivating style. His second release for Oneness Records it’s a heady, spiritually and socially conscious mix of Roots, Dub and Funky Soul – with flashes of Jazz thrown in for good measure.

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Mark Wingfield with Jane Chapman and Adriano Adewale – Zoji (2020) [Official Digital Download 24bit/88,2kHz]

Mark Wingfield with Jane Chapman and Adriano Adewale – Zoji (2020)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/88,2 kHz | Time – 01:04:50 minutes | 1,20 GB | Genre: Jazz, Ethnic Fusion
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Mark Wingfield

Parallel Times. Dizzying constellations of notes netted within the soundboard of the harpsichord, quill-plucked and sent spinning in darting arcs and ascending steps. . . Harmonic fog adrift from which notes slip out in silvery streaks, gleaming with passion, while some, disconsolate, fall into dark silence snuffing out their glow. . . Cymbals sizzle and resonate, ceding space to the crackle of shells shaken. Wood, skin, clay all brushed, touched and tamped, honed into accents and beats, breathing between the firefly flurries criss-crossing through their time…

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Mark Wingfield – Tales From The Dreaming City (2018) [Official Digital Download 24bit/88,2kHz]

Mark Wingfield – Tales From The Dreaming City (2018)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/88,2 kHz | Time – 01:02:54 minutes | 1,25 GB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Mark Wingfield

Fueled by the momentum generated from two landmark 2017 group efforts – the Wingfield-Reuter-Stavi-Sirkis quartet’s magical “”The Stone House,”” and the leaned down Wingfield-Reuter-Sirkus trio effort, the potent “”Lighthouse”” (both critically acclaimed works of extraordinary creativity and vision) – Mark Wingfield’s sophomore effort for MoonJune Records launches into the cosmos, from the space station where his stellar MJR debut, 2015’s “”Proof of Light,”” docked! Rejoined by the sublime rhythmic engine of Yaron Stavi, on fretless bass, and supreme drummer, Asaf Sirkis, the innovative guitar impressionist carries his unprecedented expansion of the electric guitar’s sonic palette of sound and expression into further uncharted dimensions. The session is augmented by a guest appearance from fellow MoonJune artist, keyboardist Dominic Vantomme, whose tasty synth work decorates four selections. The compositions are as spellbinding as Mark’s far-reaching guitar work and the trio’s sensitive corporate delivery. Prepare to be starstruck on this ambitious new release, as Mark Wingfield’s adventurous, pioneering guitar work transports listeners to destinations previously unreachable! “”Tales from a Dreaming City”” is immediately essential, further cementing the artist’s position among the instrument’s most radically unconventional practitioners and its most forward-thinking tone architects, ever.

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